We're Riding Back to the Borderlands
by The Professional Holiday Man
Summary: Oh, boy! Pandora: a land filled with senseless violence and a crap load of guns! I've always wondered how the game would be if all 6 characters were in the same world at the same time, and this was my best attempt at it. So, yeah; enjoy my crappy writing! Ship: ?
1. Fresh Off the Train

A shovel is forcefully shoved into the ground filled with the bones and remains of some of the bodies that had fallen on Pandora. At the end of the shovel's handle was a small yellow robot thinking out loud, as usual.

"Oh great, more dead vault hunters. Handsome jack must've been busy."

The robots loud, ear piercing voice was enough to stir the snow covered man laying on the ground, unnoticed by the robot. The man then opened one eye angrily, trying to find where that horrible noise was coming from.

He laid his eyes upon the robot, it finally noticing the injured man.

"Oh wait, you're not dead!" He shrieked, much to the man's dismay, as he raised a robotic hand into the air proudly, almost like a child when they ride their first bike.

"Finally, Claptrap, your metaphorical ship has finally arrived!" The robot spun around in a circle, his wheels making a whir as he did so.

The man had enough of this annoying robot's voice, personality, and everything. Talk about a bad first impression.

The snow covered man tried to get himself up, but only managed to slowly, and painfully, move his hand slightly forward. Oh, how much he hated his body for being weak right now. Explosions do have that effect on you, they are pretty deadly after all. But then again, so was he.

Set with determination, the man mangaged to forcefully pull himself up, reawakening all the pain he had forgotten about in his slumber. He really didn't miss this part of the job.

He mustered up enough energy to smile grimly at the robot as it continued talking about belly buttons or something. He reached for his lucky hachet, only to turn his smile into a angry frown when he realized that it was gone! He couldn't kill the robot with his hands, well he could, but he had no energy for that right now. He started to quickly dart his head around his surrounding, analyzing it as to find a possible dig site. Once he saw that he was in the middle of a graveyard, it seemed, he nodded quickly before crouching down at the first pile of bones nearest to him and began to dig as fast as he could right now, which, unsurprisingly, wasn't really fast at all.

"Hey, what'cha looking for, vault hunter?" The robot stopped his rant on Handsome Jack and looked at his new friend, trying to at least look like he was worried.

The man, not wanting to talk right now, just grunted and continued to search in another pile of bones.

"Oh, I got it! You're looking for an ECHO device!" The robot "snapped" his "fingers", "I think I saw one in that pile right next to you!"

The man realized that a sentence had appeared at the top right of his vision, and it read, "Search in the pile of bones".

The man, having no idea what that means, just scratched his head and did what it said. He walked over the big pile he had made that rested by a big rock, and stared at the specific bone pile, wondering if an ECHO device would actually be in there. He hadn't seen done in a long time; probably 4 months now, actually. After a couple seconds, he began to dig, adding more to the already big pile of snow. After throwing out somerib cages and skulls, he found a black box.

It had the name, _ECHO device,_ sprawled on the side with a black, blocky text font, something most of these people probably never even seen. It's structure was surprisingly simple for something so advanced: it was a rectangular prism, with a dip at the middle part for the screen, with a small roof-like structure to cover it. It had many buttons under the screen, all different sized and different colors, but only 4 of them were actually useful.

"This is fitted with-" The robot kept going on about whatever, the man couldn't care less about him and just threw a skull at him, earning him a robotic grunt, and attached the ECHO device to his belt, right next to where his hatchet would be.

After the small boot-up, a blue screen appeared, stating that the ECHO needed new software updates- a 12.3 update to be exact. Right underneath it had a number: 30.

The man groaned as he safely concluded that it meant 30 minutes and layed down on the snow covered ground, thinking up of ways he could kill time. Finally settling on relaxing in an attempt to get rid of his soreness, he wrapped his hands around his head, groaning as his muscles stretched, and closed his eyes, trying to think about other things. You can only imagine how hard it is to relax with a robot screaming about how he should respect his elders and the feeling of being watched looming over the man.

* * *

 _Pandora's weather is great, as always._

A woman thought grimly, a small, sarcastic half-smile etching on her face.

She was a blue haired girl, wearing a tight yellow body suit with the sleeve for her left arm cut off, exposing tattoos matching her hair. They seemed to be symbols of sorts, maybe from a lost civilization. They ran down her left arm, and if common sense was correct, it went a lot further than just her arm. She was walking through the frozen tundra, holding her arms together across her chest as to trap some heat as the snow sank underneath her combat boots. She felt weak. With every step, her body just wanted to shut down and rest for awhile, but she didn't want to stop until she found the other people she was riding with on that train ride that was abruptly ended.

"DON'T WORRY, THE RED BAR FILLS WITH THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES." The muscular man walking beside the woman shouted, swinging his blood covered buzz axe dangerously close to the woman's face.

The blue haired lady just smirked, bemused as she kept on walking in the snow, the soft crunching relaxing her fried nerves after that big explosion. She was determined on finding those other people. After all, they could help her.

* * *

After the last system update downloaded, a digitalized _ding_ was heard that brought the man out of his daydream. The man yawned and opened one eye to see that the system was initializing all the important stuff. Stuff like his health bar, which was dangerously low, and his map. Strangely enough, not counting his arrow, 5 arrows were displayed on the blue-tinted map. Upon closer inspection, the man also saw that a hatchet symbol was also on the map, and it was nearby!

The man quickly stood up, before he clenched his arms and legs, a wince audibly escaping his dry, chopped lips. He forgot he was still sore.

The man, still with a hand clamped onto his sore muscles, looked at the robot and mustered up enough energy to get out what he was about to say to the mechanical pain in his butt. "Finally, some f*cking good news." He muttered under his breath, "Hey robot!"

He called to the robot, efficiently stopping another one of his small digressions.

"Any last words before I forcibly make your hacked up body fit inside of a tuna can?"

"Hold on, you're gonna kill me?!" The robot shouted, again, hurting the man's ears.

"Pretty much. Just thought you'd like to know so you could get a running start." He started to calmly walk towards the hatchet symbol.

"B-But, I thought you were sore!?"

"Never stopped me before."

"A-Aren't we friends?"

He cringed.

"You might wanna start running now. 1..."

The robot yelped, as he quickly turned around and starting to wheel his way across, moving his hands up and down as he went. As he was going, however, he was looking back the whole time, causing him to crash into the snow-pile the man had made previously.

He let out a small _ooph_ , as he crashed into the pile, before slowly gazing up. Being a sentient being with a short stature had man disadvantages: not being able to see over the counter, not being able to go on ride, oh, and the possibility of being buried by a pile of snow, too. He watched in horror as the pile leaned over, losing some chunks as it did so, but still retaining it's menacing form.

"Oh, boy." He simply stated as the pile engulfed him, effectively trapping him.

The man smirked, the idiot ran right into the snow he had shoveled out.

"Wait!"

Something appeared on the man's ECHO. It was a lady? A lady?! In his ECHO?

The man rubbed his eyes, only to see that he could still the lady even with his eyes closed. He forgot how weird these ECHO devices were.

"You'll need the help of that funny robot to take you to Sanctuary, the last strong hold of the resistance, and defeat Jack." The lady continued as she was moving in various poses in front of a fan it seemed, not that he was complaining. Seeing such a beautiful woman is a rare sight on Pandora.

Axton, finally having a name, scratched his head as he reached for his trusty hatchet stuck in a decomposing bandits face, a sick popping sound emitted from the skull when the hatchet was removed as the bandit's head slumped down into its chest, and replied with a simple "Ok." As he walked towards, the still-buried robot, the bloody hatchet in his right hand and a determined look on his face.


	2. Setting up the hud

**If you guys want any ships or anything, make sure to tell me in a review!**

* * *

As the cold air bit at his skin, as the snow gave away to his combat boots, Axton was currently walking towards a buried robot, thinking about his choices at this moment, it was either kill the robot and go on with life, letting whatever this vision-he-was-seeing's advice go unheard, or help the annoying ass robot, and try to kill Hanhdsome Jack, and possibly, probably, get all the girls in the end.

 _Kill the robot._ Axton approved his thoughts with a small nod and walked to the robot with purpose. It's not the robots fault... Just kidding, it was entirely the robot's fault. After all, he didn't want to go deaf, or attempt to kill himself, while trying to get to this "Sanctuary" place.

Axton was now right above the robot, a little bit of the remaining brains of a bandit dripping off the bloody hatchet he was holding. He was so focused on how happy he'd be after this that he couldn't hear the snow crunching behind him. He began to raise it as he tried to imagine how life would be without this robot. Great.

"Stop!" A voice shouted at him as he heard a rapid footsteps of someone approaching him.

As soon as Axton was ready to slam down his hatchet, he felt a small weight tackle him down, the snow flew in the air as Axton and the mysterious weight fell on the ground with a oomph, Axtons wounds were just getting worse at this point. The stranger fliped him over. He looked up to see the face of a young girl, wearing what seemed to be a dress with a black shirt underneath, the only part showing being the skull printed on the shirt, and stripped leggings with boots to go along with it. Her hair was tied up in pony tails with goggles holding her hair in place. Axton has to admit, this girl would be cute if she didn't have that hateful glare on her face, obviously directed at him. Also if she didn't look like jailbait; this may be Pandora but Axton won't swoop that low unless he's had enough rakk ale to kill 100 men.

"Don't you dare kill that robot!" The young girl scolded, acting as if Axton was about to commit a horrendous crime against humanity. But the way he saw it, he was doing it a favor.

To make sure her point was coming across, she began to shake Axton as she started list off all the reasons that robots are better than humans. All Axton could hear was the loud whirring of the servos in her right arm moving frantically, trying to keep up with the girls' demands.

Axton, was really was just out of it, not only did he survive an explosion, but now he's being pinned down by a small girl that somehow listed over 100 reasons to why he shouldn't have tried to kill the annoying robot.

After 3 grueling minutes, the girl was finally out of breath, resting her hands on Axton's chest, who was currently trying to stop his brain from rattling. Realizing how she looked, on a hot man with her hands on his abs, she quickly got off, a slow blush creeping up on her face. She's never been that close to a guy before, and his muscles were so... The girl quickly slapped herself, _this is Pandora, there's no time for this,_ she reminded herself.

"I-I really hope you learned from this experience, you freaking idiot! Don't mess with robots!" She shouted, walking over to the buried robot, crouching down to dig him out. Axton, on the other hand, was still on the ground, aching as he held his arm again. He was really having none of this.

* * *

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fallen ice covered train tracks, there was a man (woman?) who wore in a black skintight suit, which covered his face, blocking anyone from seeing it's true face, was walking quickly towards where his ECHO device was saying there were two other people, hoping that they were 2 of the 4 that he was on train ride with.

"Hey, Zero," a small man shouted, his rusty voice making the assassin cringe, "have you found any guns yet? I haven't shot a gun since that cabron, Handsome Jack, blew up the train!" He moved his hands after every word to emphasis his point. "If I don't shoot a gun soon, I might go crazy." He lowered his voice on that last part, he slowly looked up at his silent comrade, hoping that he got his threat. Only to see that no, he didn't. The guy wasn't even looking at him, it didn't even seem like he cared, like he knew that he could take him down easily, and while the dwarfish man wouldn't admit it, he knew that he probably could. I mean, he saw him take down a big bullymog using only a small, sharp rock and some sick jumping skills. All in all, he did not want to get on his bad side.

The man looked down at his feet, wondering, what will be the next gun that he gets, salivating when he got to some really powerful guns.

* * *

"I WILL POUR MY PAIN INTO YOUR SOUL!" The buff man yelled at a scared psycho, one who seemed to be saying his last words. The strong man then raised his buzz axe and slammed it down on the psychos head, all the blood and brains ripping into pieces and some flying onto the man's mask and body. A deep maniacal laugh was emitting from his throat, he loved the sounds of killing, well, manslaughter, really, the screaming, and he especially loved the horrid sounds the axe made as it pushed through all the bones and tissues, and the fact that he gets a meat bicycle after this.

After the psycho stopped frantically moving his arms around, the man then bent down and took the bloody ECHO device from the mangled body that laid in the blood soaked snow.

"Take the device and show the girl." A voice said in his head,"She could help us."

The maniac turned around, and walked towards the beautiful woman that was currently throwing stones at the windows of the abandoned house in front of her, a fresh body laying next to her. I guess looks do kill.

The woman heard the sounds of snow crunching and peered a careful eye towards the sound, she saw her friend. "Oh, hey." She started before she stopped after seeing all the blood that covered her comrade. Thank god he was on her side.

Holding back the urge to gag, she noticed that he was holding something, something bloody. Hoping it wasn't some severed hand or anything, she carefully peeked at his opened hand to see what he was holding. Upon closer exception, it turns out it wasn't a hand, thank god, but just a bloody box with the words "ECHO" in big, bolted letters sprawled across the side of it.

She's read about this in one of the books from back at home, apparently they show where the last people you had a conversation with were or something like that. She's always thought that it was pretty creepy, but now that she thinks about it, it could be pretty useful right about now.

"Where did you find that?" She questioned, still looking at the device, periodically looking up at eyes that were shadowed by his bloody mask.

"OFF THE SOULLESS BODY OF THE NEW MEAT BICYCLE I JUST MADE." The insane man replied, looking a little proud of what he did.

Thinking about what he had said, she figured out what he was talking about. It was on the bodies of the bandits! She quickly turned around to the bandit she was forced to kill while the insane bodybuilder was off killing some psychos to, and I quote, "Fill the red bar with the blood of my enemies."

When she reached the dead body, she quickly said sorry before bending, giving a good view to the guy behind her, to grab the ECHO device, or whatever looked similar to what the guy was holding. Finally finding it, she had no idea how to equip it.

"Umm, this might take a while." The blunette said as she fumbled with the the buttons on the strange device.

* * *

Axton, with his hands firmly shoved in his thick jacket pockets for warmth, stared at the young girl with with a nonchalant look. She was currently asking the robot if he was fine, and when the robot said he was, while waving his hands trying to put more emphasis on the fact that he was, in fact, fine, the girl just opened him up and checked all his servos and wires and junk. It almost made Axton feel bad for it.

Almost.

Axton was seriously considering just leaving the girl to fend for herself before he saw that she finished harassing the robot. She sighed which released a smoky white fog that was built up in her small mouth out into the open, which quickly disappeared with the wind.

"You're so lucky he's fine or else I would've punched your stomach so hard it would make a bandits' handy work seem like a kindergarten student's artwork." She threatened as she squinted her green eyes threatening, and unwavering towards the handsome snow-covered soldier, raising her bionic arm in a fist to show that she's serious, looking at the handsome man, while nonchalant eyes looked back at her.

"Uh huh," he quickly brushed off her threat, for he knew it was empty, "I'm Axton by the way, don't think we exchanged names yet..." He walked towards her, leaving a Axton-sized print on the rock he was resting on and extended his right hand out of his pocket towards her for a handshake. Upon seeing this, the girl considered it a threat, and put her hands up in a Karate style pose, which would've been slightly threatening to Axton if it actually looked like a karate pose. Axton let out a bemused chuckle, which pissed off the girl.

"What are you laughing at, robot hater?" She shouted as she extended her robotic index finger at his, trying to look angry with him. Which only made Axton laugh harder. It was a hearty laugh, one that rattled the canyons, one that was heard by two certain people who quickly got into a alert set of mind, keeping a eye everywhere they could.

"Hahaha," his laughter was dying down,"sorry, kiddo. It's been forever since I had a good laugh like that." He wore a sincere smile on his already handsome face, making the girl's heart skip a beat.

"So," he walked towards her again, this time, not going as close as before as to not make her feel threatened by the older man,"what's your name, doll?" With a small smile still on his face, she then pondered if she should really tell him. After a couple of seconds, she has made her decision. "You shall earn my name, once you earn my trust." She smiled slyly, trying to make the man feel intimidated as she crossed her arms, waiting for a response

As she said that, another blue sentence showed up on his HUD. This time, it said,"Earn the girl's trust." If this was going to be a permanent thing, there were going to be problems.

Axton thought about what the girl said, then stared back at the girl's emerald eyes, the smile still on her face, and eyed her up and down. The girl certainly didn't seem like she was the fighting type, after all, she seemed like a teenager! Still though, she could provide moral support in case everyone's spirit gets low. While Axton was currently eyeing the girl up, the said girl felt kind of nervous under his gaze, her heartbeat getting faster, the sudden need to start curling her hair with her finger filling her head. She just hoped he would stop looking at her with such an intense stare.

"Alright, deal." He finally said as he took her hand, the action slightly shocking the girl,"But let's make this deal a little interesting." The girl silently waited for his continuation. "I'll earn your trust by the end of the day tomorrow, and if I don't, I'll do anything you want for a week, but if I win," his eyes had a little sparkle, one that sent a chill down her spin,"You're gonna have to flirt your way into a date with anyone that I choose." He gave her a confident smile, one that said _you're going down._ Axton knew it was childish, but there's a reason children have more fun then adults, they just do whatever they think is going to be a good time.

The girl gulped, and hoping he didn't hear her, shook his hand back as she tried her best to give him a smile as confident as his but it ended up being a nervous one. Axton, knowing that he's already got her scared, pulled her hand towards him, putting his mouth right next to her ear, making the girl's breath hitch, getting lost in her throat, as frozen as she is right now.

"I suggest you start working on your flirting skills." His warm, grisly voice made her neck tickle in a peculiar way. He let go of her hand and walked off towards the forgotten robot and asked him to lead the way, leaving the young girl panting, frozen as her mind tries to figure out what just happened as all she could hear is her heartbeat rapidly beating and the cold air whipping around her ears, creating a loud hissing-like sound.

For some reason, she was starting to enjoy this robot hater's company...

She looked up from her intense gaze set on the snow at her feet only to see that Axton and the robot have gone on without her.

"Hold on, wait for me!" She yelled, frantically waving her hands as she ran towards her two new comrade on this hellhole called Pandora.


	3. If I Win, We Make Out

**Anyone get where the chapter name is from?**

* * *

"And here is where I would hang out with my friends," the robot pointed a mechanical arm towards the poker table covered with money, which Axton quickly took, with the outer shells of other Claptrap units,"if Jack hadn't killed them all!" The robot stopped in front of a run down furnace,that looked like it hasn't been used in decades, signifying that the small tour has ended.

"If it sounds like I'm happy, I'm not. I'm actually pretty depressed!" The robot continued talking as Axton was currently searching around for anything that he could take; shifting through file cabinets and looking on the repair table, while his comrade stood at the entrance to the home of the robot, her hands crossed across her chest, looking at the handsome soldier intensely. She wanted to loot and plunder like the next guy on Pandora, but stealing from someone who offered you shelter from the freezing cold seemed harsh.

"Hey, doll." Axton, not even bothering to look up at her, called out to her while still rumbling through some papers,"How about you stop staring at me and try finding a weapon, we ARE on Pandora, after all. You never know what could happen. The robot heard what was said and wanted to make sure his new friends didn't feel threatened or scared.

"Oh, don't worry," the robot stated, getting Axton to periodically glance at the robot,"this place is the safest place on this planet! Nothing can get in he-" Before the robot could finish, he was interrupted by the sudden rumbling of the underground shelter, the snow falling in from the hole in the ceiling as a big shadow emerged, coming down the pole-like structure and grabbing the screaming robot by his wheels. The big beast, now in view, adjusted the robot, making him right side up and ripped out his eye, some wires coming along with the mechanical eye.

As quick as it came, it gave a spine-chilling roar and shimmied it's way up the pole and off into the snowy mountains, carrying the eye around its neck.

The robot, now on the floor with his hands near his empty eye socket, quietly whimpered.

"The gun, in the cabinet. Get it."

He pointed a finger towards Axton, going past him and ended at a snow covered safe he had previously tried to open, but the previously red light, signifying that it was locked, turned green once the robot pointed towards it. Maybe the robot controlled it remotely.

The commando stood up from the pile of shells he was searching in and quickly walked over towards the safe. If this robot was his only way to this _Sanctuary_ place, he would have to be alive to guide him. Unfortunately.

The young girl ran towards the injured robot, kneeling down next to it and placing his body on her lap. She repeatedly asked it if it was ok or if it needed help from a girl genius like herself, to which the robot replied, repeatedly, no; saying that he knows someone else that could do it.

Suddenly, a quick whirring sound was heard before cold air flooded the room as they could all hear the sharp wind, whining as if flew around the room, slapping the faces of the vault hunters, leaving a cold imprint behind.

"Hey!" Axton shouted as he pulled out the pistol from the safe, holding it ridgley towards the door,"Who goes there!" He cocked the worn out gun, prepared to shoot anyone that comes through. The young girl was currently terrified, hiding behind one of the empty claptrap shells, it was one that had a tuxedo with a black bow tie to top it all off.

"Hold on, don't shoot." A woman walked in slowly, holding her hands up to show that she has nothing, then she looked at the one that yelled at her. Her eyes widening as she saw a familiar face, one she has seen earlier today. "Axton?" She questioned, carefully eyeing down the soldier just to make sure that it was him. His handsome face was covered in scuff marks, his mysterious white markings above his eyebrow still remained though. His thick brown coat was in decent shape, the strap that held it in place, however, looked unscathed. The pockets that resided on the strap seemed perfect as well. His cameo colored pants were dirty with snow and marks that not even she, a rather cursious woman, wanted to know their origin.

After eyeing him up and down, she was sure it's him. "Axton!" She shouted in joy of seeing someone that didn't want to kill someone at every opportunity that they had. Axton, who had a look of confusion at the woman, suddenly recognized her.

"Maya!" He shouted as he holstered the pistol and slid over the poker table to hug his friend, this action made 2 particular people suddenly get irked with a slight hint of jealously. The woman, who was not prepared for the warm embrace, hugged back, inhaling the soldier's natural musk, sinking into the warm feeling after wandering in the cold for ages. She sighed contently as they broke the hug, a smile still eched on her face.

"You have no idea idea how happy I am to see someone that's not insane." The soldier had a big grin, wide and gleaming, as the girl in the back continued to get even more angry at the newcomer, and so did a particularly insane individual.

The psycho grip on his bloody buzz axe tightened as he stared at the looks on their faces. "WHO'S THE SMALL INJURED MAN?" He loudly asked, squinting his eyes towards the man in an unfriendly manner.

"Oh, right, I forgot to introduce you guys." The girl jokingly smacked her forehead.

"Dumbass.." The small girl, visably angry, muttered softly as she walked towards the 2 new people, taking a side next to the man in the mask.

"Oh please, introduce me to the big buff man you picked up on your way here." The commando joked as he put his hands snugly in his pockets as he turned to look at the man in the mask who was staring intenstly at the soldier, a vicious tint was in his one exposed eye.

The woman giggled followed by a snort, a noise that caused the tension in the room to subside as the commando held in his laughter as to make her not feel too embarrassed.

She cleared her throat, a small blush spread across her pale, white face. "Anyways," she continued,"this man saved me at the train station, I kid you not, his first words to me were, 'I'm the conductor of the poop train'." She smiled at him as she recalled the memory, raising a fist as to mimick the psycho's actions, "He never really told me his name, so I just named him 'Krieg' and I don't think he minds either."

"MAYBE THE BEAST IS LONG GONE BY NOW!" He replied

"Yeah, I don't think he minds." She smiled at how the commando was clearly enjoying the story she was telling. "Krieg, this is Axton, a friend of mine that I met before the train ride I told you about." She motioned towards the soldier who greeted Krieg by making his fingers resemble a gun and flicked it up towards his direction with a click of tongue. The man's patient was gone, he wanted to kill him. Now.

"Fight me." He said, surprisingly, in a low manner.

"What?" The soldier asked, making sure he heard him correctly.

The man's grip got tighter on the Buzz Axe, it's motor slightly starting to whir up, reawakening the murder instinct that resided in the psycho.

 **"Fight. Me."**


	4. The Beginning Starts at the End

"Fight. Me."

The psycho's two words silenced the whole room. Even claptrap, who was in agonizing pain, shut up. Surprisingly, he knew when it was time to shut up.

Maya was shocked. Not only at the fact that he could actually say something in such a normal manner, but at the fact that he wanted to fight Axton, one of her most trusted friends.

The buzz axe's rapid grunting the only sound that was heard echoing throughout the small, but cozy, frozen settlement.

"Are you sure?" Axton questioned carefully, eyeing down the man in front of him, trying to analyze his strengths and, most importantly, his weaknesses. "I mean, I'm not opposed to it or anything," the man then slowly reached for his hatchet's leather grip, that was just screaming to be used after such a long time,"I just want to make sure that you actually want to do this." Axton's voiced dropped at the end of his mini-threat.

"Hey, um, guys." the small teen inserted herself between the two men, hoping that they didn't kill themselves then and there before they even had a chance of getting out of this freezing cold,"You both know this is a horrible, horrible, just **horrible,** idea, right?" She looked at the two of them, hoping to get some sort of response, but they just stared at each other. Dark eyes meeting light eyes. The eyes of a soldier meeting the eyes of a murderer.

"Yup." Calmly replied the soldier, a ghost of a smirk forming on his face. "In fact, it's a terrible idea. But it'd be fun seeing a psycho, a creature I kill effortlessly, attempt at killing me." He was too cocky for his own good.

Gaige was a little irked at the man. Sure, he may be handsome as hell, but his ego was probably bigger than the universe itself.

Gaige gave a little sigh, looked at the ground, and made her final decision. "Fine. Kill yourselves for all I care."

The girl slowly strolled outside of the make-believe ring that the two men were in, she stopped walking when she had reached Maya, who was leaning on one of the more sturdy ice walls, her hands across her chest and with one foot resting on the wall, looking at the two men with annoyance riddled all over her pale face. She was so pretty Gaige just wanted to punch her. But she shushed her true feelings for the girl and took her place next to her, gazing upon the two kids stuck inside the body of men.

This should be entertaining, was her last thought before the psycho started to charge at the soldier, who was standing still; hatchet in his hand, he held a calm, almost stone-like, expression his face as he stared down the opponent in front of him. The force of his feet were kicking up buckets of snow and the force of his chaotic laughter coupled with the chainsaw-like sound coming from his axe send a shiver of fear down the two spectator's spines.

 _I hope he'll be ok_... They both though, the look of annoyance turning into the look of fear and anxiety. Unbeknownst to the both of them, they were thinking of the same person.

* * *

"Hey, Zero!" Shouted the small man, anger clearly in his eyes, "When the hell are we going to meet those other vault hunters, we have been walking for hours!" The man clenched his fists, he was seriously done with this sh!t.

"Soon." Was all zero said before he became silent again, slowly trudging through bone piles of animals and, unsurprisingly, humans

"What the hell are even all these ho-"

"Shh!" Zero's robotic voice cut off the enraged dwarf, "There are footprints here." The assassin touched the obvious boot print made from, most likely, a male and some small foot prints following them. Zero looked up in the direction that the footprints pointed to and began to make the final leg of the journey. "We're almost there."

* * *

It has only been 3 minutes into the fight and the outcome was obvious: Kreig was panting, so much so it seemed like he had just ran a marathon. Axton, who hasn't used his hatchet yet, has been dodging every one of his attacks with ease, not even breaking a sweat. And the fact that Axton was a trained soldier was also working in his favor. Sweat dripped down his hidden face, making wet streaks as it cut through the dirty skin that Kreig has worked forever on.

"BLUDGEON ME WITH ALL THE MIGHT OF YOUR MIGHT POWER YOU TRUFF OF USELESS GRASS." Kreig shouted at the annoying opponent. The fact that he wasn't even trying was what pissed off Kreig the most.

"Really?" Axton questioned, he tilted his head as a small smile grew on his face. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I have people that I wanna impress." The man slightly jerked his head toward the two women, one of which quietly chuckled at the comment, "But I actually was meaning to just oil up my gears, you know?"

"I COULDN'T GIVE A RAT'S FACE, KILL ME, FIGHT ME, MAKE ME FEEL PAIN." The psycho starting to run towards the commando again, swinging his axe over his head and brought it down, with the force much like a gunshot, right where Axton's head would've been, but the soldier was too quick. He moved his feet in a practiced manner, darting quickly to the left, leaving a trail in engraved in the snow.

"Whoa! That would've killed me, man!" The soldier was shocked that he almost cost him a head. Then it hit him, one hit from that axe and he's done. All those years in that grueling army would be for naught. He wasn't going to let that happen.

"STOP MOVING AROUND, RABBIT!" The psycho screeched as he pulled his axe out of the snow, slowly starting another run at the man.

As Axton was watching the psycho, he realized his weakness: his axe! He's nothing without it, and he's pretty sure he doesn't have a gun. Axton's goal was set: Take the axe, and show him a lesson. A new objective showed up on his HUD.

Stop the Psycho.

BUM, BUM, BUM.

A rapid series of knocks interrupted Axton's train of thought, causing him to look over to the door, forgetting about the psychotic man still charging at him with his axe revving high up in the air, ready to taste some of the commando's entrails.

After seeing two people walk in, Axton quickly turned towards the lunatic again, quickly trying to move, but he knew he couldn't. All he could do was fall down to the ground, both of hands at his sides as he looked at his impending doom: the axe that has seen plenty of death as it was, and he was going to be the next victim it would take. His eyes have never been so wide.

He couldn't hear anything; the cries of Gaige, the two new comers shouting at the psycho, or claptraps annoying shouts.

He couldn't see anything; Gaige's terrified face as she starting to run towards them, the two intruders walking into the shelter, one running, the other taking long strides, or the siren, who's face was not her cool and collected one. This time it was a scared and anxious face as she switched between looking at Axton and down at her arm.

Then, all was black and the objective in the top right was changed to a taunting **FAILED!,** a red x marking it off.


	5. The Awakening of a New Feeling

The siren fell to the ground, tears staining her eyes, coughing in-between every sob. Her arm was killing her right now.

The soldier was prepared to death. So, why could he still see things?

The room was left as it was before he was almost killed, but the color was different. Everything was purple and slightly distorted. He tried to move his arm, no luck. His legs? Nope. He was paralyzed in some sort of bubble.

 _Pandora is a crazy ass planet_... he thought as he stayed paralyzed, straining every muscle to try to get any movement in them.

 _Pop!_

The bubble burst, the soldier falling to the ground on his rear end, a slight oomph leaving his chalky throat. "What the heck was that?" He questioned as he rubbed his head, trying to get rid of this dizziness that was racking his head.

"Axton!" the girl jumped into the commando, pushing him down into the spongy snow. "You almost died! You cocky bastard!" tears were starting to break through to his emerald eyes. _No. A real badass doesn't cry_ she reminded herself as she forced her tears back down from where they came from.

"You're so lucky we have a siren on the team!" She shouted out of joy as she hugged the commando tighter. This is Pandora, he could be gone as soon as they leave this shelter.

"Ow." Commando groaned, "Kid, you gotta stop jumping on me, it's hurting me psychically and emotionally." Axton noticed the tight grip he had on him. _Aww, it's like I'm her teddy bear. Weird._ Axton grabbed the girl by her shoulders and slightly pushed the girl off of him to look at her,"For a teen you sure got a strong grip, you play tennis?"

"Axton." The soft yell of the aching siren was barely heard from the soldier, he turned his attention towards her, pushing off the girl in his arms, much to her dismay, and ran towards Maya. She looked exhausted.

Forgetting all about his dizziness, he slid next to her, asking if she was ok and looking for any psychical signs of damage.

"Yeah, I'm good." She coughed violently, "It's not everyday you awaken your powers." A tired smile was formed on her face, it was a tired on for sure, but it also had a tint of satisfaction in it.

Axton smiled happily, he remembers her always complaining about not awakening her powers as soon as the monks said she would. He took of his thick brown jacket, draping it over her soldiers. It was extremely over-sized, but it was comfortable and welcoming. The siren sniffed the jacket, she loved the way he smelled. It was intoxicating.

"THE MAN KNOWS HOUDINI MAGIC! RUN!" The Psycho began to run away from the group, but before he could get far, one of the new comers grabbed him by one of his straps on his back, holding the tall, bulk man with such ease it was actually a weird sight to see.

"We've come from afar/Are you the familiar faces/We've been striving for?" The man with the black mask spoke in a haiku, a word many on Pandora would consider gibberish.

The man had his mask facing towards the direction of Axton, who was still surprised that a twig like him could hold a bulky man like Krieg, who was currently trying to get away from the man, shouting curses and other weird things at him. Sometimes he would even try swinging at him, all of which the man in black easily evaded. The man eventually decided that putting him a hold would be the best option; so he got to work. He quickly swooped behind Krieg in a speed faster than anything they'd seen and looped his arms in between Krieg's arms, forcing them to arch. He then proceeded to casually use his hands to force his head down and kicked the backs of his knees to make him kneel down to his level.

The whole thing was too quick for anyone to catch, and once Krieg realized what had happened, he began to fuss again, wriggling around trying to get a good swing at him. When Kreig wouldn't just listen to the man's demands, he just decided to pin him down to the ground by kicking his knees in, which caused him to fall down, and jumped on his back, putting a dominating foot on his head. He looked almost as if he was posing for some hero photshoot. Krieg, finally accepting defeat, drew out a long sigh and slammed his face into the snow, hoping to somehow just forget he was being pinned by a man significantly smaller than him.

After a long silence, Axton was the first to speak, "Depends," He raised a suspicious eyebrow, eyeing the one new comer that just demonstrated his skills in taking down enemies, "was your train train's stop due to an assh*le named Handsome Jack."

"Dude, did you just bleep yourself?" Gaige questioned, silently hoping that somehow, he was some sort of advanced artificial Intelligence.

"A contract I signed when first joining the army made me have this stupid chip installed."

Axton chuckled at the stupid rule, "Apparently, when signing up for anything explosive and or gun related, they'd rather you not curse during the fight. Apparently it makes it less 'serious'." Axton scoffed, he obviously didn't like "no cursing" rule.

"Anyways, that's not what we're talking about" Axton calmly shook his head as he was getting into his serious mode. "Still waiting for your answer, bu-"

"FOR FUCKS SAKE!"

The loud midget shook the whole shelter, scaring everyone, even Zero was slightly surprised, but he hid it extremely well.

"YES, JACK TRIED TO KILL US, WE'RE THE OTHER SURVIVORS, NOW CAN WE DO SOME QUEST OR SOMETHING AND GET LOOT AND CRAP?!" The dwarf was done with all of narrative and just wanted some action, and most importantly, a gun or two. Ok maybe 100.

After everything had settled down, Axton spoke up again.

"U-Um, alright?" Axton was genuinely confused because, for one, he actually liked narratives.

"Well, this robot, that I'm surprised hasn't even died yet, lost his eye and needs it back." With his thumb, he pointed to the robot in the back, who promptly waved at them all.

"Oh yeah, forgot you existed..." The siren silently said, feeling no guilt whatsoever.

"Hey!" Just hearing the robot's voice was enough for Axton to hate him again, but, you gotta do whatever those sentences in the top-right say apparently.

"Alright guys, let's get a move on." Axton swung his right hand over his shoulder, signaling everyone to start moving.

"We start moving now, we just might make it to that beast by sunset."

Everyone silently agreed, and as soon as Krieg stood back up, they all started to follow the fumbling robot, purposefully not telling him when he was going hit something.


	6. It's A Date

"Hey when can I get a gun?"

The young girl, Gaige, was currently sitting on a frozen-over rock, her legs crossed, her mouth in a pout.

"When you get older, kiddo." Axton smashed open an small iceberg-like snow pile with his hatchet, ammo and another weapon emerging from the snow, somehow. "I don't want to get mine, or the others, heads blown off by you just because you, most likely, have the worst accuracy out of all of us combined." Axton grabbed the new six-shooter, spinning the chamber before he stuffed it into his backpack.

"Hey, I don't have the worst accuracy!" Gaige shouted, "I have a badass robot arm; how could I have bad aim?"

"Kid, have you ever shot a gun before?" Axton inquired, gazing back to the kid, whose face was slowly turning into a shade of red.

She sighed, undoing her legs and slumping her shoulders down, placing her elbows on her knees and using her hands to prop her head up. "No."

"Exactly." Axton stated as though it was as simple as how this journey was going to end.

He turned his focus back to the group that were currently trying to pull free a trapped claptrap.

"Hey, kid. Let's go back before they leave us in this cold." He shouted over his shoulder as he began to slightly jog through the bloody mess that was the carcasses of all the bullymogs that they had to kill to progress. The ones that the psycho killed looked the worst; he nearly made the snow turn a bright red.

"Alright, alright." Gaige softly replied, knowing he couldn't hear her, and hopped of her cold seat and started to follow the man again. Was this all she was going to see of him? Just his backside going farther away as she kept on trying to catch up to him? She had to fully jog to be able to catch up to the man. She wanted to be besides him, anyway.

"Pull harder!" The gunzerker yelled at group as they all tried to pull the robot out of the snow. Even the muscleman that was the psycho couldn't lift him, just how stuck was this robot?

"Hey guys, why isn't the little guy out of the snow and running around already?" Axton questioned as he watched the failed attempts of pulling the robot out, "Can't Maya just pull him out with her power?"

"Can't." Maya grunt as she held the robot by his wheel and a small little edge on the side of the robot's wheel compartment. It wa so small that she could barely even hold on to the damn thing. "Only works if I'm doing something for someone I actually care for."

"Mmhm, mhmm. Maybe you would be able to pull harder without my jacket on?" Axton suggested as he pointed towards the warm brown jacket. He was missing it's warmth.

"Nope, sorry. Not giving it back." The siren blandly stated as a grin appeared on her face,"This jacket is waay too comfortable. Plus, I think it looks better on me." The siren looked over her shoulder and back to the soldier, he looked so different with his gray dahl trainee shirt on, she could actually almost see the outlines of his abs.

The soldier had to admit though, she did look cute as hell with his jacket. I mean, she looked beautiful before, but with the soldier's jacket, it gave her a more "cute-not-overwhelming-beautiful" look. Guess it really doesn't make sense. Hell, she even looked better in that jacket then him, but he would never admit that. His damaged ego wouldn't let him.

"Godammit." Axton muttered as he turned to walk towards the direction of even more snow piles filled with, most likely, crappy guns.

All while this was happening, the siren's warm eyes followed the soldier, slightly chuckling as she shook her head and went back to attempting to pull the robot out. The young girl felt her stomach begin to whirl and feel sick, but not really. She's felt many feelings before: Happiness, sadness, guilt, excitement, etc., etc. But never a feeling like this.

She showed a little bit of teeth as she let out a small growl and started to walk towards the robot. She just wanted for this to be over and for them to get out of here.

"Don't worry, certified kid genius here, what seems to be the problem." She walked to the struggling group with the feeling of authority boasting proudly as she did so. She placed her hands on her hips and looked down to the robot.

"THE WALKING TRASH CAN IS STUCK AND WE CAN'T MOVE HIM!" The psychos angried screams would usually scare Gaige, but this new feeling that resided deep in her stomach made her feel indifferent about everything except her goal: get this over with and those two away from each other.

She walked around the robot, asking all the other to step back as she inspected the robot. She didn't see anything and decided to give a pull. Remarkably, he came out just fine.

"Minion! What took you so long?" Everyone groaned, they really didn't miss him.

"I was starting to think you would never get me ou-why do my arms hurt?" It took the robot a while until he realized that his arms were bent the wrong way with sparking wires poking out where the elbow joints would be.

"Minions, did you break my arms!?" The robot attempted to swing his arms, but to no avail. It just wouldn't move anymore.

Axton face palmed as he turned over to the group, "Was there any chance that you guys were standing on his arms and that's why you couldn't pull him through?" The soldier was annoyed at how unnecessarily long this whole thing was.

"Well, I thought I felt something under my foot but when I looked, it was just snow!" The dwarf was trying to defend himself.

"SAME." The psycho didn't even try to hide it...

"Maybe the snow was over his arms and you were literally ripping off his arm!" Action rubbed his temples," Whatever, hey robot." Axton ordered, "is there a way to fix your arm?"

The robot nodded, "Once I get my eye back, we could go find my buddy, Hammerlock. He's a wiz at this sort of thing."

"Hey, I'm a genius. I could help you." Gaige smiled a brilliant smile as she used her thumb to herself, eager to try to fix up another robot, she was getting sort of bored of her old one.

"As much as I'm sure you want to shove you fist into my eye and screw with my arms," Axton muttered a "I wish..." under his breath, "Hammerlock knows me better, he'll know what to do."

The girl was visibly disappointed, her shoulders drooping a second time. "Finee." An arm was swung around the kid and pulled her into what felt like a blanket straight out of the drier. It was Axton.

"Don't worry, doll, if I ever get hurt, or whatever, you could patch me right up." Axton gave her a grin- one that was becoming her favorite sight pretty fast- and gave her a thumbs up, trying to boost her confidence. Her face heated up a little, an action that not unnoticed by pretty much everyone but Axton, who was too busy noticing how short she was compared to him.

Her face turned from a rejected frown to a determined smile. "Yeah!" She pumped her first high in the air,"I would make you the most badass of them all!" Axton staged a gasp, as he smiled down to her and asked her how he would become the most badass Pandorian of all the lands.

"Oh my god, Axton! Trust me! I would give you lasers, rocket pack, bionic legs, jet packs, cup holders-"

The kid was just going on and on, using her hands to elaborate what was going on in her head, listing from the most badass things to the most unnecessary things- like a built in tape dispenser.

"Alright kiddo, alright." Axton was chuckling fondly at the kids enthusiasm for building and just how creative she was, "Why don't we save this conversation for another time when we can actually get some food and drinks into us." _And when I actually need robot parts_ Axton thought.

"Alright, it's a **date**."

The siren's eyebrow delicately raised as she grabbed the sides of the coat and wrapped it around herself tighter.

Before she was able to catch on to what she said, Axton laughed.

"Yeah, sure. It's a date." He smirked down to her red face as he gently slapped her on the back, making her emit a small sqeak, one that would've made a savage killer like the psycho melt. After quickly admiring the adorable noise she just made, he turned to the newly freed robot and asked him where to go next.

As they all walked ahead, the siren gave a side glance to the kid, before hurrying to not be left behind. Gaige was already missing the warmth that his body emmited and she was left to the biting cold. She was silently wishing that he would've given her the jacket, not that stupid siren. She sighed as she followed the rest of the team, and again, she was behind them, trying to catch up.


	7. It's Probably Dumb

_She stood there as the machine began to whirl around with its digital claws- thought up and invented from yours truely. That's why she hated it. The claws sliced effortlessly through the small figure of her classmate, one who had recently made fun of the robot. The blood and guts splattered all over. The previously blinding white walls turned into a mixture of a crimson red and orange, the students, with their mouth frozen in an open position, were doused with the red, all the projects, with their creativity and hopes, were drowned in the sea of red that SHE let happen._

 _Who knew one little body had so much liquid to give._

She jolted up from the hard, but strangely comfortable, wood, almost banging her head into the coffe table fashioned out of a bullymongs bone and pelt. Even in this freezing cold, she was sweating buckets. Her clothes were bound to stink. Sucks that they can't wash it out.

Her loud gasping and sputtering alerted a cautious soldier, as he jumped off the roof and ran inside, the girl was holding a hand up against her sweaty head, trying to control her breath.

The soldiers heavy footsteps knocked the girl out of her small trance-like state, and she looked up at the alert man, who looked around the room with his new revolver before looking down at the girl who looked up at him like a frightened puppy. _Adorable,_ he thought as he crouched down, watching the girl follow his every move with a fixated stare.

"What happened?"

Gaige has never seen him look so worried and concerned. It actually made her a little happy. Whatever bad feelings she had were slowly melting away.

"Oh, n-nothing." Gaige lied, "It's just being on this planet and everything, it's kind of overwhelming." She scratched the back of her head.

The soldier gazed tiredly into the kid's eyes, she was currently trying to avoid eye contact, sweating profusely, and wore a forced smile. She was obviously lying.

The soldier sighed as he thought of his next move to try to comfort her. After a few milliseconds of thinking, he came up with a brilliant idea that was wort it's weight in gold...not really.

"C'mon." The soldier said before standing up and walking outside again, "This might clear your mind."

The girl was confused, but still got up to follow, making sure that she brought a blanket with her as she wrapped it around her shoulders and felt it drape down far past her feet. She made her way outside, the blanket making streaks in the snow ridden floor, past the passed out gunzerker holding a beer bottle, past the psycho who was cradling his axe dangerously close, and past the siren who was currently wrapped up in a burrito-type way, her perfect, blessed face facing towards the wall. Gaige narrowed her eyes and continued forward, not noticing that the assassin was no where to been seen.

The soldier was waiting for the kid outside, looking at the snow fall softly to the frozen ground. "You know, you walk incredibly slow." He tiredly grinned as he continued to walk to the left, circling Hammerlock's shack-like house. He continued walking before he stopped at the vending machine that accompanied the house and looked up. He looked down at his before softly pushing his legs against the ground, which resulted in a giant leap up to the top of the vending machine, amazing the robotic teen.

The girl's mouth was wide open, "Dude, are you already bionic?" She muttered, flabbergasted.

The soldier laughed, "Have you seriously not noticed?" He questioned, a smile breaking out on his face.

"Noticed what?"

"The gravity; it's different from regular planets."

The girl's eyes were wide open. "I thought that was just me..."

"Jeez kid, you have a whole lot to learn." The soldier jokingly shook his head and crossed his arms.

"I'll teach you later, just jump up here." The soldier jumped down onto the vending machine and crouch to let one of his hands dangle from the edge, "I know how difficult is it to get used to the gravity so we'll start slow: just jump up and grab my hand."

The girl looked down at her hand periodically before looking up to the soldier's hand, an obvious look of nervousness in her eyes.

"It's all in the knees." The soldier advised

The girl nodded her head silently before crouching down, trying to get all the power in the knees and extended her legs, suddenly feeling disoriented at how weightless she felt. Thankfully, she was still able to grab the soldier's hand, before groggily pulling herself up, letting herself fall into the blanket of snow, letting it engulf her.

"That was awesome, but I r-regret it." She said through pants, trying to get the sick feeling out of her stomach. She really wasn't expecting to be that weightless.

"C'mon, kid. If you want to the badass I know you can be you should be able to jump around while backhanding bandits in the face." The soldier grinned, trying to give his "wise" words of advice to his newest pupil. "But I didn't bring you here so you could lie on the vending machine, we still have to get to the roof."

"A-Alright." The girl turned to her side then onto her stomach, forcing herself up with her jelly like arms.

The soldier was looking at the girl with concerned eyes. She really couldn't handle low gravity yet...

The soldier walked towards the girl and stopped a feet away from her, turned around and crouched down,holding his hands out from his back, "Get on." He said as he motioned his head towards his back.

The girl, still panting, had a confused look on her face as she looked at her back and then realized what he meant, "A p-piggy back ride? What am I, 2?"

"I mean, if you want to jump up to the roof, you're more than welcome to." The soldier grinned as he slowly began to get up before he was forced back down by a small weight that held tight around his shoulders and rested it's head on his back.

She sighed, "Fine."

The soldier chuckled, "I knew you couldn't resist me." He felt her tense up before she used one of her hands to hit his back.

"Oww, that was the metal one!" He feigned injury.

"Just shut up and jump up there, dumbass." She scoffed into his back, a small smile hidden by his broad shoulders.

"Haha," he warmly chuckled as he slightly shook is head," Alright, hold on!"

He tightened his hold on the girl's legs and used all the force in his legs to send him in the air, surprisingly, he went higher than expected. The girl was holding on much tighter than before, a small squeaking sound was heard by the soldier, who just laughed as his gracefully landed on the snow-covered roof.

"Alright, we're here." He announced, "You can stop choking me now." He said as he slightly shook her around.

She got off groggily, before landing in the snow and murmuring, "Sweet, solid ground." She wrapped her blanket tighter around her, closing her eyes and trying to fall asleep.

"Hey, are you actually trying to fall asleep in some dirty snow?" The soldier grinned, "C'mon, we've come this far, you might at least see what I wanted to show you."

After a couple seconds of silence, she delicately arose and sat with her legs crossed, both of her eyes closed, her head facing the ground. "Alright, but if it's dumb, I'm going back to my floor-bed."

"Trust me. This isn't dumb."


	8. Yeah, it was Dumb

**Trust me, this isn't dumb.**

* * *

The girl delicately opened one eye before promptly opening them both to gaze in awe and wonder at the beautiful night sky that laid before her.

The sky was lit up with the pulsating diamonds accompanied by all kinds of colors that wrapped around gracefully as though it were a ballerina performing a practiced play. The burning red moon shined brightly as it casted it's low, waning light across Pandora. The icy cold wind was no longer a nuance since she was too awe-stricken by the inky, black, beautiful sky that sprawled across the barren, savage land that was Pandora. Why would something so bright and beautiful want to cover up this? The only aspect that she disliked was the fact that the giant Hyperion _H_ was in the sky, looking as if it were almost staking their every move. In all honesty, it probably was.

The girl was so enthralled that she didn't even notice it when Axton sat next to her.

"Beautiful, ain't it." He suddenly spoke.

She gave a simple respond to the obvious question, "Yeah."

"It almost makes you forget that we are stuck on this cruel planet 'till further notice."

"Yeah."

"Kid, I didn't just show you this just so you can look at it, I did it so I could talk to you."

The girl gently turned her head at the soldier, before softly smiling, "For this view, I'll talk about anything with you. Even perverted stuff."

The soldier stifled a laugh before smiling back, "Maybe we could talk about perverted stuff next time, but this time it's serious." His face turned back into a concerned one, "Are you ok?"

It took the girl a moment before answering, "What do you mean?"

"I mean, no one wakes up in a jolt while sweating buckets if nothing is going wrong."

The girl started into the man's hazel eyes, the thought, _can I trust him?_ was running through her head. After confirming that yes, she could trust him, she took at deep breath.

"It was about a year ago, back when I had a normal arm. It was the school science fair and I was so pumped up to present my new robot to everyone at school. Everything was going perfect, people were liking my robot, in fact, I was going to win the first prize! But then, this one kid, Jeremy, started to make fun of my robot." Her eyes were staring at her thumbs that were resting in her lap, her eyes were beginning to sting.

She sighed, again, before continuing, "Then, something in my robot clicked, it started lashing out, slicing everything that got in its path, didn't even matter if it were living or not. Long story short, that's why I'm on Pandora, that's how I lost my arm, and that's how I first killed a man..." The girl was on the verge of crying, but she had already cried enough, her eyes wouldn't let her cry again.

The soldier was sitting the whole time listening, silent and patiently, before softly sighing and turned to look up towards the stars, "This was about 3 years ago; the first time I was assigned on a mission on this f*cking planet. I couldn't tell you how excited I was to kill someone for the first time." he chuckled slightly, "My mission was to eliminate every bandit in a designated area. That mission was probably when I saw the most blood I've ever seen in my entire life, we murdered every single one of them, only to find out, they were innocent. All f*cking innocent men that were sent to a mining camp to provide for their families! So trust me when I say, I know how thinking you killed innocent people feels, it's horrible. But life will move on, you'll find something else to feel guilty about, something else to beat yourself up with. I'm not saying that you should just forget about it, but if my expierences have taught me anything, it's this: you have to do everything but forget about it, you have to accept it, remember it, and soon, you'll soon be able to live with it."

The girl's eyes were now glistening with tears.

"Sorry if that was bad, I wasn't really expecting this, at all." He softly laughed as he wiped a single tear from he corner of his eyes.

"Don't be sorry, Axton, you taught me something that I would've never been able to figure out on my own. I'm just really happy that I bumped into you in that frozen ice land."

"Me too." He responded with a smile that will forever be in her heart, one that said "Don't worry, I'll always be there for you."

"Gaige." She said, a bright smile still on her face, "My name is Gaige."

"Gaige, huh. What a pretty name, _Gaige."_

For some reason, hearing him finally say her name was music to her ears. The way the vowels danced to happily out of his mouth and to her ears delighted her for some unknown reason.

They were staring at each other for a long time. Finally, Axton spoke.

"Hey, we should probably go in now, it's freezing out here. Wouldn't want our next legendary badass to get a cold, would we." He smiled at her before getting up onto his feet, only to have his hand grabbed by small, dainty fingers.

"Can't we just stay out here for a bit?" She questioned nervously.

"What? But I'm actually fre-"

"We could share the blanket!" She shouted a little too loud, "W-We could share my blanket... If you want." She was scared that she was sounding too eager. Now, she doesn't usually pray- correction- she never prays, but she was frantically praying to whatever is up there that this man would want to share the blanket.

The man looked down at Gaige, who was showing him her best attempt at puppy eyes, and luckily for her, it was working.

He softly smiled down to her, "Alright, _Gaige_ "

 **Thump thump**

Her heart started rapidly increasing and her breathing was starting to get slightly ragged, staggering over some invisible force. The hell is going on with her? Her senses seemed to be heightened, noticing every detail about him: the way he moved, the way his boots sounded as they collided with the snow, and how safe and comforting his hand felt.

"But, just for a while. I may have been joking about you being attracted to me, but if the others see me cuddling up with a 14 year old, I will most likely get pulled apart by the siren." The soldier said, easing a finger as he spoke.

"14?" She questioned, "Dude, I just turned 18 last week!" She glared angrily at the older man. Did she really look that young?

"Well that just changes everything." The soldier stated with a blank stare.

The girl gave him a puzzled look.

"Nevermind. Let's just enjoy the outdoors right now." He gave her a smile, her favorite one, and waved his hand to reassure her that it was nothing that important.

He sat back down next to the girl, scooting as close as he could before grabbing the end of the blanket closest to him and slinging it over his left shoulder, letting it fall down to the snow before grabbing the inside of the corner and pulling the blanket shut, the girl mimicked his action, and together, they created a successful trap for their body heat.

The girl couldn't believe how bold this move was, and he actually said yes! There were fireworks going off in her head as she started to smell Axton's natural smell and how wonderful the scent was. She was trying her hardest to force herself to remember the sensations she was feeling right now: how warm she felt, how he looked all snuggled up, how she could hear all the small grunts he made as he tried to get into a comfortable position, and how his natural musk smelled like.

Since the girl was a lot smaller than Axton, she was nearly buried in the little fortress that they made, but she was extremely warm. She took another bold move and decided to lean her head against his shoulder. Thanks to how the blanket covered half of her head, he couldn't see how red her face was. He also couldn't see the most important feature on her face: her smile, and how it wore the happiest smile a girl could make: the smile of a girl in love.


	9. First Quest Together

The girl was the first to wake up from her slumber, and she was the first to freak out over how they had moved around overnight, and just how perverted it all seemed.

She woke up to find her head resting on the soldier's shoulder, being comforted by Axton's brown military-issued jacket, which glowed with the pride of a man still yearning for adventure, her hands were both wrapped around his arm as if it were a teddy bear that she did not want to let go of. Her left leg wrapped around Axton's right leg, her right seemed to be following along as it was across BOTH of the soldiers' legs, her knee was sensually raised up, going from his legs to his waist, dangerously close to a certain male-only body part that was currently pitching a tent. Not to mention, her body was on it's side, flat up against the soldier's right arm, her small assets looking as if they were attempting to smother his arm. This was an extremely pleasant surprise for the young girl.

Upon further investigation, she also saw that Axton's right arm was gently wrapped around her neck, pulling her in, and that he had a faint smile on his unconscious face.

"Omgomgomgomg!" She frantically whispered as she wondered how the hell did they end up like this, but in reality, she didn't really care how it happened, she's just happy it did. She has never felt more comfortable in her entire life than she did right then and now.

She was contemplating what would happen if they stayed in this position any longer before she heard the door to Hammerlock's house swing open.

"Hey, fancy-dude, where's Axton?"

Gaige froze, but her mind was running at a million miles per hour.

"What, hmm?" He said as he was stirred out of a nap. He was laying down in his barely passable lawn chair that was placed on his buried porch, staring off towards nothing. He had a sniper laying comfortable across his lab, fully loaded and ready to shoot any enemies that happen to show up again.

He rubbed the laziness out of his eyes, when it wouldn't work, he gave up and looked to the person who woke him up.

"Oh, your fair lady, I assure you, I haven't seen that handsome fellow since last night."

"Well, if you see him, tell him we're going on a mission soon and to meet us by the graveyard, we're gonna be field testing over there."

"Right, will do." He said as he laid back into his chair, pulling his hat over his eyes, the red glint from his missing eyeball still shown from under the rim of the hat.

"I mean it, tell him where we are." She straightened her face and tried to sound serious.

"And I said, 'Will, do'." He repeated, "You can trust me, chap, I'm a man of my word."

"Don't call me _chap_."

"Noted." He laid his head back into the pillow accompanying the chair, resting his eyes as he listened to the strangely calming whips of the wind.

The siren sighed, "Whatever."

She stormed off to join the rest of the crew at the graveyard, watching as the psycho and the dwarf were wrestling in the snow, making tidal waves of it fly around.

"Phew," the mechromancer let out a breath of air she didn't know she was holding, she also didn't know that her hold on the man go tighter, "that was close."

Unfortunately, she uttered her sentence a little too loud and, much to her disappointment, woke up a sleeping soldier.

"Hmm, Gaige?" He said groggily, "Why does my arm feel like it's paralyzed?" He looked to his right and noticed Gaige.

 _What's he going to say? He's going to probably think I'm a perv! Will he like me after this? Will we still be friends?! Will he be ok with it? Of course not, I am LITTERALLY CUDDLING HIM WITH MY BREA-_

"Gaige?" The soldier said softly.

Gaige's heart shattered. She knew it, he would never have liked her after this. It's over. She prepared herself mentally for him to say it, but the she could still feel the tears swelling up in her eyes.

"I'm pretty sure my arm is dead right now, can you let it get some air?" He smiled coyly.

"OH. Yeah. A-Alright." She could feel the anger rising in her. He hit him in the chest before burying her face in his chest. She then realized she was acting like a school girl, so she got up and brushed off her skirt. "Can you move it now?"

The soldier sat up and tried to move it, only to realize that yup, it was pretty much paralyzed. And it felt like a crap-ton of needles were going at his arm.

"Nope. Whatever you did, it took out my arm better than any tranquilizer ever could." The way he laughed, the way he used his other arm to helplessly swing his "broken" arm, the way his eyes lit up whenever he smiled. Everything about his joyful, carefree nature relaxed the previously heart-broken girl.

The girl chuckled and smiled warmly towards the soldier before she began looked around her. She was trying to look for the blanket they had been using, but no luck. All she found were some bones and ammo to some guns she'd probably never get, "Nothin'." Accepting defeat, she sat down on a nearby snow pile, only to have the whole snow structure collapse due to her weight. The scream she let out nearly reached the rest of the gang, who, luckily, were too busy firing weapons at screeching beasts to notice.

"Oh, comon! I'm not that fat!" She yelled at the pile.

"Mm, I don't know. You did successfully cut the circulation to my arm by just laying on it." The soldier gave a teasing grin and he walked over to the collapsed girl to help her up.

"Rude pile of bones and crap..." She muttered as she took a hold of the soldier's good hand.

Once they were both up, the girl walked over to examine the rubble a little closer, "Hey, Axton, is this worth something?" She said as she held up a black box that had a blank screen with only one option: "Play."

"Oh, an ECHOrecorder? Nah. Apparently, there are so many to be found on this planet, that buying it would just make buyers and merchants lose money rather than make some. All we can do with them is listen to them once, and only once."

The girl looked at him as if questioning if he was serious.

"Yeah, it's kind of a major design flaw; so make sure you listen well the first time."

After digesting the knowledge she had just been given, she walked over to Axton, and pressed "Play".

"We've hijacked the train that runs through the Dust." A mysterious female voice came through the radio, and upon hearing the voice, Axton visibility tensed up,

"If it all goes well, we should get to Sanctuary in a day's time. Hyperion hasn't diverted any troops from New Haven to pursue us, and a sandstorm has devoured their nearest frontier town. We just need-" The sound of a window breaking could be heard from the echo recorder," oh, damnit- everyone! Get away from the windows!"

End of recording.

"Hey, do you know her?" Gaige asked suspiciously, throwing the now useless recorder over her shoulder.

"H-Huh? Oh, yeah. I do." The soldier said, staring off into the distance.

The girl waved her hand in front of his face, "Helloo, you gonna tell me?"

"Y-Yeah. Talking about it might make me feel better."

"So you know how I went on that mission to Pandora?" Once the girl nodded, he continued, "Well, she was on of my comrades on that mission, and, being mission protocol and everything, we had to try to be friends with everyone in the group, so you know, we learn to trust each other, and believe it or not, but Helena was the only person in the group the I actually really enjoyed being around. On all the days I had to be with someone else, I lied just so I could hang out with her. Sure, I got into some trouble because of her, but she was probably the coolest person I met."

Axton became silent for a moment, as he was remembering some fond, almost-forgotten memories, leaving Gaige in suspense as to why he seemed so tense to hear her voice.

He sighed, "The last time I saw her was on that mission, we both promised to meet up in my hometown, I think it's now called Lynchwood or something. But she never came... I waited for days and days, hoping that she nothing bad went her way..."

He stopped talking completely for a few seconds, "Do you think there are any more recordin-"

"OH, IT SEEMS YOU HAVE FOUND ONE OF HELENA'S RECORDINGS, I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE THEM; CAN I PAY YOU TO FIND THEM ALL?"

Axton is pretty sure he's deaf, or at least he now has some sort of hearing damage. Why the hell was his ECHO on the highest audio setting!?

After the ringing in his ears subsided, and he lowered the volume from 100 to 20, he took his hands off his head and talked to the worried Gaige.

"Ow. So-ow- it turns that there are more of these recordings, and we gotta find them for Hammerlocks weird, most likely kinky, collection of audio logs." Gaige snickered. "So, hey, wanna go on a quest with me?" He gave her a smirk.

Gaige gave him a big, toothy smile, which replicated her current feelings, "I thought you'd never ask."

~~End~~

* * *

 **Christ, that first part's probably gonna get me banned or something. Hey, question: what are the boundaries on how sexual you could get in a a T-Rated fic? Just wanna know for potential future chapters and whatnot. Thanks for reading though!**


	10. Bullet Holes Corrupt the Mind

**A/N Damn, I never thought I'd get to 10 chapters...**

* * *

Axton winced as he pulled open an ice box that reeked of a smell Axton was very well used to: Death. So he was not surprised when a dead body was inside, it's limp, lifeless hands slipping out of the small claustrophobic entrance.

He grabbed at right arm, trying to hold the pressure on the two fresh bullet holes he had just gained a few seconds ago. Turns out, there was one bandit left in the ground. Huh, who would've known.

He pulled the piece of ripped cloth that belonged to a dead bandit's sleeve a little tighter, trying to stop the bleeding. If only he had a medpack.

He pulled out his ECHO device from one of his holsters on his belt and punched in a certain girls' number, "Hey, kid." He said, trying not to sound too much in pain, he was pretty sure he was beginning to feel dizzy, "You find any recordings?"

After a minutes delay, a frantic Gaige replied, "WHAT? OH, NOPE, BUT I DID FIND SOME BULLYMO-AagHs!" A loud crash was heard on the other side of the "phone" as he pulled his head away as to not damage his ear. He had a strange calm look on his face.

Now, usually, someone would never trust a kid that has never shot a gun to be able to protect themselves. But this wasn't just anyone, it was Axton. More specifically, her friend, and he can trust her with more than enough. So that is why he isn't worried, in fact, if he went over there to help her, he would then start getting worried, because she would never be ready to face challenges by herself. And if he's ever gone, he wouldn't want her getting hurt just because he had no trust in her to be able to protect herself. This is more formally known as: _tough love_.

The soldier sighed as he heard another yelp from the girl as another rock was thrown by the beast. "Kid, you have that new gun remember? It was, pretty much, my best weapon in my backpack right now. Just shoot it till it dies." The soldier simply stated as he leaned the "phone" on his shoulder, next to his ear, and used his free hands to scrummage around the body to see if anything way inside the, now broken, ice box, "I mean, it works for everything else on this planet."

The girl groaned, "You don't have to tell me about that, _Axton._ " She said his name in a mocking tone, when in reality, she had completely forgotten about the weapon. She quickly reached for the weapon shoved tightly in her skirt pocket and ripped it out of its' duck-tape holster (she wanted to keep it safe) and started to come out of her cover, before turning on the ECHO device and saying, "Oh, and call me Gaige from now on. You know my name, just say it. Being called "kid" is getting too weird for me."

The soldier hummed, "Mmm, how about we talk about that after you rip that monster a new one, huh?" He was still searching through the ice box, only finding bones and small amounts of ammo.

"Aye aye, captain." The quickly signed off as she jumped over her cover and began to shoot all of her bullets at her huge target, nearly hitting everyone one. Luckily, Axton wasn't lying when he said it was his best weapon, as the beast harshly jutted around before falling down to the now blood-stained snow, clawing at his fresh bullet wounds as it emitted a loud, raspy, whimper-like growling before it gracefully stopped moving. Stopped living. Then everything was silent. All that could be heard was the wind, still beating hard on the small little "town", if you could even call it that, and Gaige's ragged breath as her knees gave away, causing her to fall into the snow, tears starting to claw at her eyes.

Sure, it was trying to kill her, and sure, it was big and ugly, but killing it gave her no joy. It was like putting down an aggressive dog: Big and scary, but still a living animal. But that's what it takes to survive. It's either they go down, or you go down trying.

Gaige gave a final, exhausted exhale of air, trying to get her bearings as she starting to get up.

She quickly shoved the pistol out of her sight, walking around the fresh carcass and searching aimlessly, for she had completely forgotten about the recordings, her mind was too full of other thoughts, each one overtaking the other. She kept repeatedly shaking her head, repeating the same phrase over and over:

 **It's just Pandora, you'll get used to it.**

* * *

 **A/N Sorry about the EXTREMLY short chapter this time. I'm just trying something new so my mind doesn't derail and I try to put too many ideas on the same page, and it just gets, really hard to organize for the long haul. Thanks for reading though. Words can't describe how grateful I am that people are actually reading this! Well, actually, there are: Amazing, unbelievable, and just surprising. But, all those pretty much mean the same thing so I'm just going to go with unbelievable. Anyways, thanks for reading and tell me what you think about the short chapter idea. I might upload a new chapter tomorrow to make up for the lack of an actual chapter in this one. See ya!**


	11. Never Eavesdrop in the Cold

**"Ah, bingo!"**

Axton softly exclaimed as his hands rested on an old, beaten ECHO device. It had words scribbled on the side that read: "Helena Pierce #3 log (The chick with the f*cked up eye, but nice bod)"

Axton's usual calm exterior slightly turned into anger. Judging from the barely legible writing, a bandit had written it. Great, another reason to kill them.

Noticing the number, Axton safely concurred that it was the third in the series, so he stored it in his backpack and went to find number 2. Getting up from the dirty snow, he peered over the buried fence and noticed that Gaige had come back from her search of a nearby bullymog nest.

"Hey, k-Gaige!" Axton waved over the fence with his good arm, putting on his best face for her after her first kill.

 _I mean, the girl was tough, right? One kill wouldn't phase her._ Wrong. The girl had a face so distant it could've belonged in another galaxy. She walked the way a broken man would. It reminded Axton a lot about how he felt after his first mission: guilty and dead.

Axton cleared his throat as his vaulted over the fence and up to the girl, stopping her from going any further and waited patiently until she looked up.

Unfortunately, she was too busy looking at her feet to even notice that Axton was staring right at her so he gave her another minute.

And another,

and another.

Eventually, his patience ran out and he used one of his hands to gently cup the girls chin, forcing her to face him.

"Listen, Gaige. I'm worried about you. Can you just talk to me so I know you're alright?" Usually, when talking to women, Axton would lie, try to make himself seem cool for her so she would want to get with him. But this girl, she had this certain thing about her that made Axton feel comfortable sharing anything with her. It was weird. Probably almost as weird as the fact that she was one of few women that he's actually honest with...

As Axton was too wrapped up in his thoughts, he didn't notice that she was rapidly closing the gap between then, all that Axton could do was just go with it as she pulled him closer and closer, moaning as she did so.

The soldier, trained for killing and being an ultimate fighting machine was left speechless as she hugged him out of nowhere. "Hey, doll. I know we're friends and all, but you gotta stop surprising me with these hugs." Axton's chuckling was stopped to a halt once he realized that those "moans" that were coming from the young girl was actually sobs.

"H-How do you d-do it?" She said between sobs, "How do you kill so many t-things and be f-fine with it?"

Axton sadly sighed, knowing how it felt as he went through the same dilemma, "Don't worry kid. You get used to it."

As her sobs got louder, the tighter Axton hugged. It was almost as if he was trying to shield her from the outside; it was almost as if he was trying to get her off this planet and into her private oasis. One where you didn't have to be forced to kill, one where you didn't have to be desensitized in order to survive, one where it wasn't common knowledge to carry a gun once you step outside, and certainly not one where watching living beings die was a common occurrence.

* * *

"Hey, Hammerlock!" The angry woman shouted at the outline of a tall, slender, robotic man.

He was standing in an almost military-style pose, his back straight, hands on the barrel of his sniper as it acted as a walking stick to aid his aging back, and his head up high, looking up at the icy white clouds that circled the sky in a spherical manner. "It's a Good day, isn't it, chap?" His loud, eager voice caused the woman to wince.

"Yeah, it is, and it would be better if you would've actually called Axton to come practice with us! Now he's going to be completely rusty when we go on this mission!" She shouted at the man who, obviously, and frankly, didn't give a damn.

"Oh? Well that might be a problem." Hammerlock said as his voice went ever so low towards the end, "You see, my dear. I've already sent him and that young lady friend of his on a mission to find some ECHO logs for me. You se-"

"Hold up- Lady friend?" A strong feeling whirled inside the siren's stomach as her tattoos started glowing a low tint of pink.

"And, where is he?" The siren questioned.

"Umm, down there." Hammerlock pointed with a straight and narrow finger pass the hill that he was standing on.

"Thanks." The siren quickly waved him off as he nodded with an egotistical smile and walked steadily over the little dune that she was on, slightly anxious of what she might see.

Once she got over, an instant surge of angry flew through her. Axton was tightly smothering the kid with his body! She was about to charge in there and break it up, until Axton broke the hug, and the siren was able to get a good view of the girl. She was crying. The feeling of anger was quickly subsiding and she was starting to worry about the young girl. She quickly hid behind a snow pile in order to listen in on whatever they were talking about.

"Feel better?" Axton asked with a soft voice

"Y-Yeah." Gaige replied with a soft, albeit, weak voice, "You know, your jacket smells really good; what kind of shampoo do you use?"

"Does "Body-odor-you-werido" count?" Axton laughed warmly, causing Gaige to start chuckling, before she broke into laughter as well.

As the laughter subsided, Gaige stared into Axton's brown, hazel eyes.

"Oh!" Axton suddenly announced, shocking Gaige, along with a certain siren, "I forgot to mention: I found one of the logs."

Axton crouched down as he slid off his backpack and placed it I front of him with a practiced manner, as he had done a million times before, and took out a rugged ECHO recorder to give to Gaige.

"Now, it's number 3, so don't pres-"

"Oh yeah? How about this- lady? - I don't even know what to call you:" The douchey voice of Handsome Jack came through the small device as Axton sighed and Gaige quickly, and repeatedly, apologized to Axton, " you tell me why you look like you headbutted a belt sander, and I'll let all of you go right now."

There was a slight hesitation before a familiar voice spoke, "My husband gave me a skag pearl ring. The pearl released hunger-inducing pheromones."

"Oh. You know what? I am so sorry. I - I just... Forgive me." Axton mildly chuckled _He is a convincing liar..._ , " Where's your husband now?"

Axton's heart ached, he knew the answer.

"He's dead." She simply replied, her voice showing barely any emotion.

"That's a heartbreaker, but..." A gunshot was heard on the other side, followed by Helena's death scream accompanied with many others, "You got something in common with him now at least!" Handsome Jack exclaimed with amusement oozing from his voice, and the tape stops, useless forever more.

"F*cking Handsome Jack." Gaige muttered as she threw the tape over her shoulder, "Hey Axton, you ok?"

"Huh, oh yeah." He quietly replied, "I kind of already knew what happened..."

Gaige exhaled, "So much crap going on today."

Axton laughed, "You said it."

Axton scanned his surroundings, "Hey, how about we just find the others and give them to Hammerlock to get this over with, huh?"

"Yeah, alright. I'm sorta pooped out today."

"Same. Emotional roller coaster right now."

...

"Hey, Axton." Gaige broke the awkward silence, "There's this thing that keeps on popping up in my eyes that says, "Equip mission, 'Handsome Jack Here!'" What does that mean?"

Axton facepalmed.

Of course! That's why he couldn't see the exact location of the audio logs!

 _Objective "Look at your screen": checked off._

Axton sighed, "Yeah, that would actually make everything a whole lot easier."

After a few seconds in their virtual menu, they both had the mission selected and went towards their respective audio log site.

After waiting a few seconds, the siren let out a breath she didn't even know she was holding and stood up out of her hiding spot, shivering as she rapidly rubbed her arm, going up and down as quick as she could to generate any type of heat.

That's when she finally realized: never try to eavesdrop during a winter so cold it could freeze hell over.

She sneezed as she walked off toward the rest of the group, who were by the bulletin board, doing one final check on their weapons as they wait for their last party members before going of on a mission.

 _They actually look mildly professional..._ Maya thought as a smirk grew on her snowy face, _We might actually have a fighting chance..._

She then sneezed, before she wiped her nose, causing her to sniffle.

 _Ugh. Reminder: Never eavesdrop in the cold again._


	12. Playing Whack-A-Mole: Axton's side

_Alright, champ._

He said to himself,

 _Just find the audio log, and we're done. Easy, right? Well.. Maybe it would be... If I f*cking knew where it was!_

Axton had been searching the big green circle on his map for, what felt like, hours now. And he was about ready to give up.

Axton sighed wearily, all this wondering around aimlessly was really having a toll on his morality.

He kicked a snow-pebble as he shoved his hands into his warm pockets and pulled the collar of his jacket up to his nose, before watching it easily slide off. He should get a mask in the future.

He was walking towards Hammerlock's house as his mind began to try to entertain itself by thinking up ways to spend the money he would get after this quest. His train of thought went like this: The death of Handsome Jack, powerful weapons, hot women, and finally Gaige.

 _Hmm... I wonder what our relationship is..._

He didn't really think of it much- in fact, he didn't think of it at all- but it was just another one of those random thoughts that would wander into your head periodically before leaving as silently as it came. _Like the last_ _casualty of a brutal war: gone, but not forgotten._

Axton smiled to himself, _look at me, getting all deep and crap._

Axton was near the gate to Hammerlock's mansion before he felt the ground shake. It was a small one, almost like how the ground would shake if a baby were jumping up and down, but it still alerted the soldier. Quickly, a bandit,wearing a mask only the crew of captain Flynt would wear with pride, popped out of the ground, like literally _popped_ out of the ground, leaving a human-sized hole from where he came, and little snowyy remains around him.

He quickly shaked off the snow before he pulled out his racing-designed torgue shotgun and pushed it straight into Axton's stomach, screaming, "I come from the land down und-"

Before he could finish his sentence, complete his final thought, or even comprehend what was going to happen, the soldier quickly yanked his hands out of his pockets and placed one of them on the barrel of the shotgun in such speed it could rival the God of Speed, Hermes. With ease, he used the bandits height against him, and pulled down on the shotgun pulling down the bandit, and while using the bandit's momentum, he put all the force he could muster into his left knee, which was promptly propelled squarely on the bandit's nose, making a sick cracking noise as he flew back and fell painfully on his back.

The bandit screamed in pain as he held his broken nose, rolling around in the snow like a little kid.

Axton was slightly panting as he looked at the gun the mole was holding. After realizing it was crap, he scoffed and threw the shotgun over his shoulder, only taking the ammo cartridge.

"Heh, I have to admit: you surprised me there." Axton remarked to the squealing bandit, who was taking in sharp breaths as to dull the pain.

The soldier looked down at his cargo pants and noticed a crimson red splattered on the left side of his pants, right where his knee, which was currently throbbing, was located. He smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, emitting a _tch_ sound, "You got my new cargo pants dirty... That's just rude, man."

He slowly walked over the bandit, as he was crawling away, holding his nose as he looked back everyone once and a while to see how close his death was.

Axton was now over the whimpering soldier, watching his every move with an indifferent eye.

The train soldier reached for his lucky hatchet, pulling it out as it dully-shined in the sun.

"For what it's worth... This was your fault."

He swiftly brought down the rusty hatchet over the bandit's neck, cutting through as if it were butter, the muscle, and bone parting as if it were welcoming an honored guest.

The bandit gaves it's finally scream as it limply became a human doll, the only moving thing being his head as it disassembled from it's original form.

Axton sighed, "Jesus..."

After a few seconds, Items erupted from the body, surprising Axton again, only this time, he didn't destroy the items.

Axton looked over the items, then his eyes saw it: the audio log.

"F*ck yeah! Three down!" He threw his fist in the air triumphantly.

He quickly stuffed the audio log in his backpack, as well as some other weapons and ammo, before taking one last look at the body.

He sighed for the final time as he got up and began his walk to the mission board, leaving behind the dead scarecrow.

 _Wonder how it's going for Gaige..._

He thought as he, once again, shoved his hands into his pockets and just hoped that no other mole was out there to surprise him.

 _Play Whack-A-Mole and get the prize: check._


	13. Learning How to Shoot a Gun: 101

"Yo, Ax!"

She waved around an audio log as she ran up to Axton side, slowing herself down to walk at his nonchalant pace.

"My name's "Ax" now?" The man chuckled as he shot a glance at the smiling girl.

She tucked her hands behind her head, taking long strides as to stay right next to the man. "Say whatever you want; I think it sounds cool. Like a battle axe!"

"So I'm named after a weapon?" He put a hand up to his chin, "Alright. But you're gonna have to accept whatever nickname I come up for you."

"Whaaa? That's not fair. You're probably gonna come up with some kiddy name or something: like Gaigey, or something like that."

"Oh come on, Gaige. How little do you think of me." He put up a hand to his head as to over exaggerate the comment, "I'd never give such a name to a fine young woman as yourself."

Her face became a slight tint of pink. "Then what would you call me?"

"Well, for now, I'll probably call you doll, or something. But once you mess up and embarrass yourself somehow, I'll just make something up from that." He gave her a sly grin.

"What a gentleman." She deadpanned.

He gave a hearty laugh, "Thanks, I try."

"Finally you guys are here!" The angry siren exclaimed, putting a hand on her exposed hip, "We've been waiting forever!"

"Yeah, amigo. I was starting to think you were too busy having fun with la niña." The dwarf pointed a worn finger over the the girl, catching her attention."

"Hold up, what is the Spanish dude saying?" Her face showed utter confusion, as she was not really paying attention in the first place.

"Something stupi-" The siren began, before being suddenly interrupted by the big psycho.

"HE THOUGHT YOU TWO WERE BUMPING MEATS, THE MOST GLOORIOUS ACT FOR A MAN TO DO." Krieg bluntly shouted, finally getting through to the confused girl.

She could feel her face getting hot. She starting waving her hands in front of her, all the while Axton looked at her with amusement in his eyes. "O-Oh! N-N-No we don't have that kind of r-r-rela-"

"Save it, kid." The Siren interrupted, saving the girl the embarrassment of finishing her sentence, "We're going out on a mission to get to claptrap's ship. So we might need help sinc-"

"Oh! I'm finally relevant?! Yes!" The previously mentioned robot threw his hand in the air, his fur Mohawk shaking along with his body.

"Where'd you get a Mo- whatever- Anyways," the siren continued as she pulled up her map for everyone to see, "there is a path that claptrap has been talking about for ages." She gave a little nudge of her head towards claptrap, to which he responded by saying _Yeah!,_ "Anyways, along this path, there is going to be a crap-load of Captain Flynt's crew waiting there to stop us. We're going to have to kill all of them, then later, we have to kill Captain Flynt, himself."

She digitally closed her map, putting it back on her small belt tight wound around her wide waist.

"Any questions?"

Axton rose his hand, looking like one of those "cool kids" you'd see in high school, with his hand is his pockets as he leaned on one of the many pieces of rusted metal that were holding up the shaggy wall to the side of them.

"Yes, Axton."

"Yeah, why are we doing a favor for claptrap? I'd rather be on Flynt's side and torture him." He looked straight at the robot, remembering when they first came here and Captain Flynt told them all about how he would torture it.

The siren shook her head in mock disappointment, a small grin on her face, "You're so lucky you're cute."

The soldier stared at her with a shocked face. This soldier has been through it all, but he'd never thought a siren, one of the 6 motherf*cking sirens in the whole universe, would actually compliment him.

It took him a couple seconds to respond, "O-Oh, really? Just cute? Not handsome, gorgeous, or even devilishly handsome?" He chuckled awkwardly as he rubbed the back of his head, his face full of red.

Remember that feeling in Gaige that she just couldn't describe? Well, she could describe it now: **Hate.**

She puffed as she looked off to the side, not noticing the psychos death stare at Axton.

"Aww. That is adorable." The gunzerker feigned, "But you know what is even more adorable? Guns!"

Then it sparked in her head: an idea. And even more surprising, she had the weapon-addict to thank.

"Hey, Maya." She said as normally as she could without it sounding forced, "I can't come with you- nor can Axton."

"Huh? Why." She eyed down the girl.

"Well, I mean, I've never actually shot a gun until recently, so my aim is kinda really crappy, and I'd rather be useful for the team. So why don't I stay back and have Axton train me?"

"Why Axton? I'm pretty sure Mr. Gun-crazy over here could teach you just fine."

"Hey! Mi nombre es Slavador Navarro Rivera, stupido!" He shook his fist angrily at the chick, who only seemed to just nonchalantly stare him down.

"Anyways, I'm pretty sure Sal over here could teach you much more about guns than Axton. Plus, he has a turret, we need that."

"Actually, my turret died." Axton corrected.

"No way, Darling died?" She asked with genuine shock, for she thought it was invincible since everytime it was destroyed, it always came back.

"Yeah, the train crash must've busted up her circuit board, can't do a thing with it."

"Another reason I should stay with him: I'm a genius! I mean, I built this hand, so I could definitely fix a sentry." She added, showing everyone her mechanical arm.

"Fine!" She reluctantly gave up, "I guess us four will go on this mission, just, don't get hurt, Axton. I might not be able to heal you."

"You got it." He gave her a reassuring nod as she smiled and walked away, everyone else but Gaige and Axton following along.

After making sure they were out of range, Gaige gave out a joyful scream, she even jumped, before she settled down and looked over to the chuckling Axton.

She cleared her throat, before looking up with sparking eyes. She was finally going to learn how to shoot a gun!

"Morning, Sir. Beautiful day for training!" She stood straight as she gave him a weak salute, but a big smile.

He laughed heartily as he walked over, gently taking ahold of her hand and brung it down, "Please, cadet; call me Ax."

* * *

Off underneath the recently active gate, an angry siren huffed about.

"Stupid Axton. We have 6 people, why do we have to split off in groups of 4? Freaking Gaige, always sticking on him like moss to a tree. I swear-"

"Oi, Chica!" The gunzerker called, "No time to be on a jealous-rage, we got baddies up ahead. Claptrap go hide."

"On it!" It said as he ran off and shoved his head into the snow.

"Wow, ok, he's got to stop doing that." The siren commented as she walked past the yellow robot, and ducked behind cover to join the rest.

"Alright, what's the plan?" She asked, taking periodical peeks at the unsuspecting enemies.

"I'll stay here and snipe, Kreig and Sal will go in to provide offense, and Maya, I've seen what a siren could do, and while they are good great destructive, all the ones I've seen were support members and assisted the others by "locking" the enemy out in their own special way, leaving them wide open the killing blow." The silent ninja went over his plan, checking his ammo and sniper out as he did so, "Any questions?"

Even though he was rhetorical, the siren raised her hand.

"Why aren't you speaking in a haiku?"

"Who cares?" The brash dwarf responded, "He's easy to understand now, plus, I'm pretty sure it's because he couldn't think of any more haikus."

The ninja took slight offense to that, he had many haikus in his mind. But that conversation was for later, now they had to focus on the mission.

He took one final peak over the makeshift cover, the rusted metal making a sick screech noise as he laid his sniper in position, alerting the bandits.

"Hey look! Vault hunters!" One bandit shouted as he waved his automatic rifle, alerting everyone that was in the camp.

"Show time, vatos!" The gunzerker shouted as he took out a Dahl rifle and a torgue shotgun from his inventory, holding up the two guns as he vaulted over the cover, going guns blazing as bullets whizzed past his head, whose mouth was currently shouting a maniacal laughter as he pulled the trigger on both guns, watching as it ripped through a shirtless bandit's body as if it were wet tissue paper.

Before the bandit had a chance to fall, Sal holstered his left elbow on his stomach, putting it at a 90 degree angle, using his shoulder to keep the head up, creating a weak human shield. He used his shotgun to shoot forward, as he used his assault rifle residing underneath his right arm to shoot unsuspecting enemies on the right.

"SHOOT EVERYTHING!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, accompanied with laughter.

"LOOK AT ALL THE BLOOD!" The, most likely, equally crazy bare chested companion shouted as he waved his buzz axe over his head, throwing it squarely at a bandits face, as he quickly jumped the guy next to him, shoving his long thumbs into his eye sockets, laughing as he did so.

After his body went limp, he ran over to his weapon, ignoring the many bullet wounds he has attained along the wa, and started slicing the remaining bandits up as if he were cutting the first piece to the cake. Except this cake had organs and blood oozing from the inside- imagine Don't hug me, I'm Scared, but on a larger scale.

Finally, after all the bandits had stop appearing from their tents, only one remained. Even though he was wearing a mask with an indifferent look, his movement showed that he was absolutely petrified.

He quickly dropped his gun after he saw that all of his comrades were dead, and raised up his hands.

The group crowded around the guy, the small whimpering sounds he released made the siren wince a little.

"For what it's worth, we're sorry." The siren said as she opened her eyes and raised her SMG, popping 20 rounds into him before his body finally fell and he gave his death groan.

"Haha, we're INVINCIBLE!" Sal screamed as he shot his guns into the air, stopping abruptly as his guns started making a _click click_ noise. He glared as his useless tools as he threw them to the side, searching the are for some new weapons as though he were grocery shopping.

"Ugh, I feel sick. This snow used to be white, remember?" The siren shared as looked at their "handiwork" holding back a gag before she forced herself to look forward again.

"THE BLOOD OF MY ENEMIES PAINTS THE ENVIROMENT WITH THEIR EMOTIONS."

"Right, Kreig. Exactly." She grimaced, not even joking would make her feel less like sh*t right now. "Can someone just go fetch the damn robot. I was get this over with."

"On it." The ninja simply stated as he ran towards the robot, keeping his blade at his ready.

The siren sighed as she took one more look at her surroundings: she watched as the dwarf looked at the bloody weapons, testing them out on the corpse, laughing whenever some limb blew up, and when it did, it was always a guarantee that he would digitalize it into his inventory. She looked over to Kreig, who was trying to have a conversation with a chopped off head, not even caring that he was sitting in Crimson liquid.

"Good lord." She simply stated as she put her gun back in her inventory, walking over to one of the monochrome-colored beach chairs that the bandits had lying around. Luckily, they didn't have blood on them. She sat down as the chair groaned under her weight. She put her hands behind her head, laying it on the neck of the chair, closing her eyes, and she just sat there. Waiting until her teammates were ready to move on.

* * *

"Try again."

The soldier stood off the the side, his hands crossed across his chest as he started at the snow-tastes with sharp eyes, a look he was copying off his military teacher.

Gaige growled, getting out of her shooting pose, which consisted her with her legs spread and the gun far away from her body, arms straight, and glared directly at the gun as she reloaded it; she's only gotten one target out of 6.

"Why do we have to do this in here? It's so cold." She looked outside the small cave, admiring the small white flakes that fell down and how free they looked. They were about 2 miles away from the settlement.

"I already told you: so we won't get interrupted. You know how much that Hammerlock, dude likes to spy. It's creepy." He shivered just thinking about it. That or it was just the cold.

"Anyways, get back to training, Cadet. It's not over, yet." He ordered

Gaige groaned, "Fine." Getting back into her stance.

"This looks so much easier in the movies..." She thought out loud, cocking the gun with a _click._

"I know right, that's was I said." The soldier grinned, "You know what always helped me?" He walked over to the girl until he was right next to her.

"What?" Not even bothering to look at him as she was too busy trying to line up the shot, but thanks to her shaky hands, she was having a hard time to.

He slid his hand down her left arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps as he did, and took hold of her hand, putting his head close to her head.

"First, like up the shot." He slowly moved her arm, closing one eye as to increase his accuracy. He stopped once the snowball's center was lined up with the reticule.

He removed himself from her side, "Now, you take a deep breath in and out, as to reduce the shaking of your arm.

"R-Right." She said, desperately trying to calm down her racing heart by taking a deep breath in, and out. Unsurprisingly, it didn't really help. _Friggin' Axton, doesn't he know what he's doing to me?_

She took another deep breath, _This isn't the time to get caught up in feelings or whatever, I have to focus._

She tried to focus all of her mind power to slow down her heart rate, and after a few seconds, it did!

"Good, your arm stopped shaking as much. Now, slowly squeeze the trigger, you can wait until you get better before you can just rapidly pull it."

She was too busy focusing to really respond. She did as she was told, and slowly pulled the trigger.

 _Boom_

Her hand shot back as the bullet shot out, straight for the target. Once it made impact, it tore threw, leaving a small entrance, but a wide exit.

Gaige's face lit up, "I did it!" She jumped up in the air, "Thank you so much, Ax. That was actually surprisingly good advice!"

"Hey, I'm your teacher. That's disrespectful." He joked as he walked over to examine the snow ball.

He whistled, "Wow, nice shot. Straight through the middle, too." He put his hands on his side.

"Thanks." She said proudly, spinning the gun sideways, her index finger on the trigger.

Suddenly, the gun rang out, causing her to jump back and drop it. She slowly opened her eyes before they jolted open to confirm that what she was seeing was actually true. After a quick, and horrifying, realization that it wasn't a sick imagination, she sprinted over to Axton's hunched over figure.

He looked down, peering onto the blood that was splattered all over his digits.

He was shot.

He groaned as he nearly stumbled down, before talking a hold on the cave walls.

"Havn't been shot in a long time. Haven't missed i- ARGH!" He yelled as he put pressure on where the bullet went through.

"Oh, sh*t, Axton! We have to get back, now!" She rushed next to Axton, putting his arm over her shoulder to bring him up.

After much effort they were both up and going, off towards Hammerlock's village which was in view, but small.

They limped their way out, Axton groaning along the way. They slowly made their way down the hill. Axton was having a hard time keeping his eyes open, everything seemed so vague, he felt so tired.

"Axton, don't you dare fall asleep on me! We're going to make it to Sanctuary remember! We're going to kill Jack!" She encouraged, looking over at Axton's pale face with a desperate expression.

He softly chuckled, "Might have to reschedule, kid." He got the words out, it took a lot, but he got them out.

"No!" She shouted, "We are going to make it!" She could feel the tears making their way before the ground rumbled.

A giant beast rose from the ground; a bullymong.

The monster growled at the two, it's saliva whipping onto their faces. Axton took a look at the monster, before taking a look at the girl. If she died just because he wasn't feeling well, he wouldn't know what to do.

He growled as he made up his mind, he pushed Gaige off of her, "Go back to the cave, get the gun. I'll hold him off."

"But.."

"Go!" He shouting, angering the beast.

Gaige ran towards the cave, leaving the soldier alone as he looked over the beast, taking out his shotgun.

"The one time I didn't feel like killing something and something as ugly as you shows up." The beast growled as it threw it's first rock, which Axton shot out of the air, taking slow strides forward, cocking the shotgun and putting in a new bullet. The beast started to change its mood, it knew what it was getting into, and it was going to enjoy it. The beast charged forward, putting one hand up as to ram the human. As the soldier watched this with amusement, he chuckled as he easily send a buckshot into the beast's front-right leg, breaking the bone and causing it to trip and fall.

Axton went into a violent coughing fit, causing blood to fly out onto the ground. When he was finished, he looked up to see the beast's arm fly into his ribcage, sending him back into the rocks behind him, causing more blood to fly out of his mouth. He was beginning to feel weak as he forced himself to stand up. He wasn't dead yet, but the beast had a problem with that, as it hit him again, this time in the head, sending him out to the snow, nearly burying him in it.

Axton has never felt this tired in ages. His eyes were blurry as he saw the beast charging at him again. He slowly raised his gun, pumping a shot into the monster's front-left leg, making it yell in agony as it toppled over, rolling around in the snow.

Axton took this as a turning point. He tried to get out of his hole, he tried to put his left arm out to pull him out, but his body stopped trying. He couldn't move, everything burned, and he just wanted to sleep.

He felt the Earth rumble as the beast stood up again, crawling it's way towards the soldier's limp body. It was over his hole, as it gazed upon Axton with a furious gaze, raising his head and he was about to chomp the soldier in half.

Axton watched his impending doom, watched as the jaw slammed right next to him, a bullet hole in it's head. A silhouette of a girl holding a gun apeared over the body, their face looking horrified as it looked over Axton's broken and cut body.

He smiled, "Kid..."

He slumped over, his side gently falling into the comforting snow, he just wanted to rest, but a certain girl wouldn't let him sleep.

"A-Axton!? Axton!" She put her hand over her head, "Oh, no no no no. You have to tell me what to do! What do I do?!" She could feel the tears blinding her eyes as she watched the soldier's remaining blood pour from his stomach.

His eyes finally closed, his body sunk deeper into the Crimson snow, leaving the girl wondering:

 _ **Why?**_


	14. If Looks Could Kill

The soldier walked into an establishment, it's rustic charm luring him inside once again. If memory serves, this was his 20th time inside.

His hands were firmly shoved into his pockets, a relaxed look on his face as he walked up the dirty concrete stairs, ignoring the people on side screaming about how he was a vault hunter- how would they know anyways?- Whatever.

Axton jarred open the doors, talking a look inside.

The same commoners and the same music, along with the same gambling machines and same chairs. Nothing changed, just how he liked it.

He took a seat, this time going for the one closest to the tip jar, already stuffed with money. He sat down, the seat making a hissing sound as its cheap material deflated, and called out to his favorite bartender, and her assets weren't the cause of him taking a liking to her.

"Hey Mox." he said with a boyish smirk.

She turned around, fully facing the man and sending him another one of her famous sultry grin, "How's my favorite soldier?" She immediately strode over, making sure to shake her hips as she did so, completely ignoring the fact that she was previously talking to another customer. She stopped at the dirty counter, quickly deciding to close the small space between then, leaning on the counter to try to give him a good view.

"Tired and thirsty. I was hoping you could help me with that." He slightly chuckled, nearly dying wasn't something he has not been accustomed to. But for some reason, this time was a lot worst, leaving him fatigued even though it's been 4 days since it had happened.

"Oh, I could help you in many ways. First, let's help you with that tired situation. I think I know exactly how to wake you up..." Her voice lowered an octave, sending small chills down Axton's spine. She leaned farther over the counter, trying to steal a kiss before a single finger from Axton stopped her.

"Yeah, no. I'm just here for the drink, Mox. Appreciate the gesture though." He, once again, gave her that smirk. It was quickly becoming her favorite part about him. That and also the fact that he was the only man that rejected her. Little did he know, this made her want him even more.

She pouted, enjoying the mental torture, "Cmon' Axton." She never calls her patrons with their names, "Just one kiss and we'll see how it goes from there."

"No, Mox." He tried to mimic his frightening captain when it came to the commanding voice, sending shivers down the woman's spine as she bit her lip. "Just the drink."

She grimaced in joy with a lustful smile on her face, "What's the point of the affectionate nicknames if there's no affection at all?" She gave out a low, soft, warm chuckle, using her hands to holster her face as it had a smile that screamed desire.

Axton sighed, giving in to the vixen.

"How about this:" He leaned next to her ear, lowering his voice, "You turn your pretty butt around and get me a drink and I'll do a mission for you later: free of charge. And before you say it, the mission can't be a make-out session."

Moxxy absolutely loved this man, "That last part is not in my favor, but ok, sure. One drink coming up, sugar."

"Thank you." He simply stated, giving her a smile that made her wish she could make a few adjustments to the deal they just made.

"Axton!" A frazzled girl came rushing in, getting the attention of others as she scannedthe room before finding the man she was looking for.

"Heyy!" He smiled, giving her a wave to sit next to him.

"Axton, what are you doing here?!" She quickly sat down next to the man, facing him as she rested her hand on the insides of his wrist, checking his pulse and kept a close eye on any other physical signs of danger.

"Well, I was going to drink, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be a while before I get my drink." He looked over to the fumbling bartender, she was looking through all her cabinets with a anxious face (she was realizing that she didn't ask what he wanted).

"So, what's up?" He turned to face the girl, not even bothering to ask why she was checking his pulse, he had a pretty good guess why.

"'What's up' is that your liver was shot to bits and your ribs and internal organs were scrambled not to long ago!" She tried to contain her panic, wondering what would happened if he drank with a fresh liver.

"Gaige, calm down, I'm fine; and that actually brings something else up." Axton looked her dead in the eye.

"Thank you." Gaige gave him a confused look, "Thank you for saving my life. If you hadn't gotten Maya, I would've been food to whatever lurks under this damn planet." He gave a dry chuckle, giving her a half-smile as he tried to look as genuine as he was trying to be, " If there is anything, and I mean anything, I could do for you: tell me. I'll make time for you."

Her heart skipped a beat as she started to fiddle with her fingers, "D-Don't mention it, Ax."

"No. I have to, and I will. You saved my life, and that's something I'll never forget. For reals, Gaige, I will do anything for you. Pinkie promise." He laughed as he turned around to face the small crowd of customers, resting the lower half of his back on the counter, turning his head over to Gaige as he extended his right pinkie finger towards her.

"Haha. What am I, 2?" She joked as she linked her right pinkie finger with his, giving him a big smile.

A drink slammed onto the counter, making the nearby customers stare at the usually calm bartender, "I don't see why you'd do anything for a 12-year old when you won't do anything with me..." She muttered angrily as she gave Gaige an angry look.

"Oh, shoot. Out of character." She whispered under her breath, "Here you go, sugar!" She returned to her sweet voice, "The best Rakkale in return for anything I want."

Gaige was startled as she looked over to the woman, eyes nearly popping out as she saw how big her bo-

"Thanks, Mox. Just remember, no make-out quests. My ECHO device annoys me as much as it is." He grabbed the drink as if there was no sudden outburst and, ignoring how bad it tasted, chugged down the drink, enjoying how his liver was already making everything feel dull thanks to the drink.

"Hold up- make-out quests?" Gaige questioned, raising an eyebrow at the lady.

"Axton," She said, trying to sound as innocent as possible, "why would this clown want to make-out with you." Obviously making a jab at the woman, who obviously didn't care.

"Not only limited to making-out, you know. We could go much further, sugar." She licked her cherry red lips hungrily, staring at the unfazed soldier, meanwhile, the young girl was very fazed. "What do you say?"

The soldier put down his drink, putting up a hand to his chin as though he were in deep thought.

The mechromancer leaned over to the soldier, "Axton, you're not actually going to do it. Right?"

The soldier put his hands down, looking as serious as possible, "I've made a choice." He looked dead into Moxxy's eyes, making her slightly squirm under his gaze.

"I will take this beer to go, thank you." He pointed at the beer with a smug smile, before scooting the chair back, emitting a loud screech as it did so, quickly walking towards the door. Gaige quickly followed, looking proud at his partner as she laughed with him.

Meanwhile Moxxy stood, star-struck, before she regained her composure, looking over to the door the soldier just went out of with hungry eyes and a finger on her red, cherry lips.

"You will be mine."

* * *

Extra:

"Did you hear? The Commados' found Moxxy's weakness?" The common man said, a large grin on his face exposing his dirty, alcohol covered teeth.

"No way. I heard that she had no weakness!" The second man inquired, a face of unbelief striking him as he almost choked on his hard drink.

"Yes way! And you'll never guess what it is. It's rejection!" The man seemed full of glee at this recent find.

"Rejection? Kinky isn't she?"

"Very."

Both men went back to drinking, no one said a word until-

"Sucks we aren't important, though."

"Very."


	15. The Last Stand for the Resistance

"Outta my face!" The crazy man screamed as he shut the small window shut, leaving the soldier with a new upgrade in his hand.

"The dude never lets me say thanks..." He commented, his left eye twitching at the slight irritation that gave him as he placed his blue ammo upgrade onto his assault rifles, watching as it disassembled itself and attached onto all of his assault rifles, a pile of blue residue was left on his hand which was meant for the assault rifles to come. He promptly sprinkled it into his backpack.

The young girl let out a laugh, "Maybe he's just trying to stay humble." She pointed out, putting her hands onto her hips.

They had just come out of the bar and were preparing for their mission briefing from the legendary Roland, a man whom they had just saved from a prison merely a day ago.

"The dude never comes out, only showing his face to those that actually have eridium to waste, a material rarer than gold. Who does he need to be humble to?" The soldier argued, scratching the back of his head as he looked over to the girl.

"Axey, I just found you drinking beer only 4 days after your new liver was put into your body and I promised not to tell anyone, especially not Maya, lemme have this." She gave him her best attempt at puppy eyes, and was a little concerned at the tired smile he gave her. Axton could go 2 days without sleep and still have the energy of a child on sugar, something was wrong.

"Not even going to question that nickname, but alright. You win, you master debater." He chuckled at his own joke, before turning into a joyous laughter.

Gaige started walked towards the headquarter, nodding her head with a smile on her face, the soldier promptly following. As his laughter stopped, he spoke again. "Ahhh... I'm so hilarious I make myself laugh."

* * *

They swung the door open, getting the attention of a anti-social genius, who took a particular liking to Axtons pectoral muscles that were quite prominent when he took off his jacket, which she has been so blessed to see since they live there.

"Oh, Axton and Gaige. Pleasure to be seeing you both; the others are upstairs, They're just about to begin the briefing." She stopped recording her rant about how her lab always smelt of bacon and looked up to the two, her same static, "no-nonsense" face she had since the beginning was still fixated on her face after years of use.

"Whoa, I'm actually on time? Sick." Gaige mentioned, a small smile on her face as she looked over to the scientist, giving her a thankful wave as said scientist promptly rolled her eyes in response, muttering about how she'll die first if they're ever in harm into one of the many empty ECHO recorders stockpiled by her desk.

"She's nice ain't she?" Axton commented, walking up the grey stairs leading to the conference room.

"I mean, compared to a bandit, she's just a notch above." She insulted, her eyes narrowing her little as she made sure not to trip on the sudden turn of the stairs like last time.

Axton laughed as he walked past the giant vault, into the room that had a table in the middle, a large, yellow globe floating in the middle with illegible writing cluttering the sides of the hologram.

"So how did they capture you anyways?" The red headed siren said, a cheeky smirk on her face as she faced her ex.

Our heroes met Lilith, the mentioned red head, when they were searching for the previously thought holder of Roland, the Firehawk, leader of a bloodthirsty cult, and a powerful and badass murderer. The name was wrong, but, they found pretty much what they were looking for.

"I was- uhh- taking a piss when they knocked me out.." The awkward commando stated as he gave a quick rundown on how he got captured.

Roland the Commando, not to be confused with Axton, is a man with excellent leadership skills, but horrible people skills. How does that work? He leads the Crimson Raiders, the last stand for resistance.

The 2nd siren sniggered, looking to her right to notice that people had already arrived.

The leader followed her gaze, and promptly strode to the table, everyone else following as they all took a spot around the table, well everyone except Krieg, he was too busy visiting Maya in the hospital.

Roland cleared his throat, taking on a strong stance as he let the words flow out of his mouth.

"Listen up, Handsome Jack is going to kills us all; unless you stop him." His eyes browsed over the four vault hunters, if he remembered correctly, and he usually does, the other two were out today.

"He means hi; that's his way of saying hi." His ex translated, making the room feel less tense as Roland visibly stood more ridged, embarrassed at the correction.

"Right, sorry, hi." He swallowed his dignity as he sacrificed all the seriousness he threw at the new vault hunters, of which two were holding back laughter.

"Listen, soldiers." He opened his steely black eyes, reminding Axton of his former captain, causing him to stand a little more straight than he already was. "I'm not going to lie: we are losing this war. We have been at him for years: taking out his men, blowing up his eridium mines, but none of them worked to halter the Avalanche that is Hyperion. But you," He looked around the room, studying his soldier's faces, "You faced Handsome Jack and lived."

Axton's nose scrunched up at that sentence. He wouldn't say they faced Handsome Jack, more like they killed some of his task forces and opened up a door to see a dummy of jack, barely surviving. But whatever, he'll take the semi-compliment.

"Fought off rippers and the bloodshots." He continued, "Saved my ass and Lilith's."

"Thanks by the way." Lilith added, earning a nod from the vault hunters.

"Now if we're going to survive this, we're going to need your help, vault hunters. Now we thought Jack just wanted to open a vault and wipe us off the map, but thanks to some Intel I stole from a Hyperion convoy, we now know he wants to control it." This caught Lilith's attention, causing her to jolt up and question it.

"The vault isn't a alien prison," Lilith cringed as she remembered some old memories with uncanny detail, "or a cache of weapons, it's a _living thing_." He concluded his cold statement.

"I'm just going to repeat myself: What?"

"The vault- it's alive and whoever opens it first gets to control it."

This gravely news, along with his deep, somber tone sent chills down everyone's spine.

"Woah." Gaige simply said.

"Woah, indeed." Roland simply responded.

* * *

Axton sat at the back of a stolen bandit vehicle, his arm leaning on the wide rail as he watched the sky. It's vast blue sea-like appearance dragging him into a deep state of thought. There was not a single cloud in the sky.

Unfortunately, he was brought back to reality by the screaming rakks in the sky, accompanied along with the murderous screams of the gunzerker, who was driving, running over everything in his path, and the mechomancer, gunning the turret attached to the top of the car, screaming with curious joy as she has never actually shot a turret before. Zer0, the silent teammate, sat across from Axton, hitting everything that was left untouched by the turret and the car's wheels with his brown sniper, never missing a shot, always hitting crits.

Just a normal image on Pandora.

Axton stood up, making sure to crouch over as to not fall off when the car jolted and walked over to the cage of the car, climbing on top of it.

"Hey Ax! Look! Infinite ammo!" The girl screamed as she shot down a rakk, watching it fall down into the dirt with a "ha".

"That's pretty cool, just don't shoot it for too long at a time!" He yelled, trying to shout over the whipping sound the air made as it zoomed by his ear, causing his dirty blond hair to shake vigorously and his ammo sashes to jiggle. "It tingles the hell out of you hours after!"

Gaige gave him a curtly nod before getting back to shooting rakks before they could dive-bomb the car again.

Axton smiled at the maturing girl as he realized it only took her 20 shots to take down a rakk; before it took her near to 100.

He climbed further, stopping when he was above Sal, the driver. It took him a couple of shouts before getting his attention.

"Yo, Sal!"

"Ay, Amigo! Como estas?" He shouted, taking time to laugh whenever he felt a bump under the tires.

"Actually, for a dead man walking, I feel really good." He gave him a confident grin, "Just a quick question."

"Anything, amigo."

"How long until we reach the spy Roland mentioned?"

"Well, Tundra Express is a long times away, but we will get there in a day. Hey, do you think we should let the girl dri- HA, HIS ORGANS FLEW OUT!"

"Gross!" Gaige shouted as she crouched down, trying to take cover from the intestines.

"Um, yeah, sure. We'll let her drive a little." The soldier started to go backwards towards his seat once more, giving Gaige a quick thumbs up and a grin as he passed her.

The Axton fell back onto his uncomfortable seat, looking at how the assassin's muscles contracted as he pulled the trigger to the Jacokbs sniper rifle, taking the recoil into his right shoulder.

The soldier laid his arm on the side of the car, once again putting an arm up to his chin as he started thinking the mission.

It was a simple one really: they were to go to Tundra Express, as previously mentioned, get info from the trusted spy, get the key, and kill jack. Boom. It was a simple four-man mission... Four-man... Because Maya is not really here right now...

The soldier sighed, leaning his head into his hand as he couldn't help but feel guilty.

 _After this mission,_ He thought, _The first thing I will do is going to see Maya and make plans with her. She'll love it._

He smiled to himself, looking into the deep, blue sky.

* * *

Extra:

The window shut stood still, allowing Crazy Earl to hear his own thoughts as he looked around the dim room, only begin lit by a small candle in the middle, accompanied by lanterns surrounding his eridium pile.

He face was stuck in an idiotic stare, as he staggered over to his brown, beaten table, roughly pulling the seat out.

Once he was seated, he took his fork, it still had yesterday's meal on it as he shoved it into the carcass of a small baby skag. He looked up the seat directly across from it, it had a form in it.

It was... rectangular shaped, having only shrunk edges to prove it was three-dimensional.

"Finally." He spoke softly, his hard, grit voice echoing around the room, "We're alone... My love."

The candle flickered, sending a dash of light to show an eridium block with a white background. It had small holes painted where human nipples would be if it were on a inanimate object. On the back, it was the same type of picture, only, it was raw eridium, and even though it had no face to express emotions, it looked shy, scared, and anxious.

The ultimate waifu for the ultimate man.

* * *

 **Author Notes** :

I'm so sorry for the last part. This is what happens when you don't get sleep, kids. 'Member that.


	16. 100 Guaranteed!

The Bandit Technical screeched to a halt, slightly skidding as the wheels left an indent in the crisp snow.

"Hey, guys. We're here!" The midget shouted, stirring awake the three soldiers in the back.

"Naoo... Five... More minutes..." Gaige groggily plead as she snuggled up closer to the back of the truck, pulling her part of the large, black blanket which woke Axton, who's side of the blanket was yanked from him.

"Hey, Gaige. That's my blanket." He pointed out, stubbornly pulling the blanket up to his chin, promptly leaving Gaige exposed to the bitter cold.

Gaige opened one eye, slightly hunching up her torso as she looked over to the soldier. "What? You're... Dumb." She promptly dozed off, a slight snore coming from her mouth since she moved her head into a weird position.

The quiet assassin was the first to actually stand up, crouching down to pick up his brown sniper rifle before looking back at the two childlike vault hunters. "We need to move now/It's going to be freezing soon/No blanket could prevent."

The soldier turned over to his stomach, using his hands to push himself up as he groaned all the stiffness from sleeping on metal started to affect him, "C'mon, Gaige- You heard the man: no blanket could prevent."

She groaned as she opened her eyes to look at the white sky, turning her head over to watch the man quickly vault over the metal border, landing with a small splash as he joined the rest of the group, putting his cold hands into his pockets.

She let out a sharp huff of annoyance as she hesitantly stood up into a crouched position, grabbing the ends of the blanket to wrap around herself as she jumped off, the blanket rippling in the air as the wind blew it around.

"Nice cape." Axton commented with his signature boyish grin, watching as the "cape" made a small trail in the snow.

She walked over to Axton, leaning her head into his chest as she muttered with exhaustion basically running out of her mouth, "Thanks."

"Not a morning person?" Salvador asked, crossing his meaty arms over his big chest, his gaze switching between her and the rakks in the sky circling them.

She didn't respond, she just shook her head into Axton's chest.

"We have to go now/ Our destination lingers/ just a block away."

"Right, man. Just a block away." His voice lowered as he tried to mock the assassin.

"Don't mock me, 'Axey'."

Suddenly, Gaige sprung to life as she looked at the ninja, her face filling up with a crimson red. "Where did you hear that!?"

The girl felt as though he were giving her a smug grin as she saw a **;)** appear in red lettering over his black mask. "Heard it on the street."

It took Axton a quick second to know where that name came from, "No way. You heard that?"

The ninja turned around, telling them to start moving as he walked away, the gunzerker shortly following after realizing he had killed all the rakks.

"Damn ninjas." Axton muttered as he followed them, kicking a small snow-covered rock off into into the cliff besides them.

The girl groaned, running up to Axton as he was forced to listen to all her reasons that he should take this invasion of privacy more seriously, and after every reason, Axton would just nonchalantly agree with her.

Meanwhile, in a bloody bed hooked up to a heart-monitor along with an I.V bag, the siren had just awoken after her 4 day slumber

* * *

"For all we know, he could be watching us while we go to the bathroom." The girl hautly crossed her arms as she glared a hole into the assassin's back, who didn't even mind the death stare.

"That wouldn't be the first time that has happened to me." The man shamefully chucked, thinking back to all the times he's seen someone's face under the stall door.

The girl was taken slightly aback, a slight hault in her steps before she continued. "Who would want to stare at you?"

"Beleive it or not, but some people find me attractive. Both genders, even." He hushed that last part.

Usually, Gaige would've made a joke on how a woman would rather die from a skag attack than see him naked, but she was slightly conflicted. For a reason she did not know why.

She looked over to the man, realizing how his new outfit change fit him immensely. He wore a grey leather coat with brown fur at the ends of the hood, providing a warm home for his ruggedly charming face. His coat was zipped up, hiding his ammo packs, which he had just refilled, underneath. The coat was snug, fitting his body just right, showing off just how slim he actually was. He was also wearing black pants, while they looked like regular pants, a train eye could see that it was thicker thank a normal one. Perfect for combatting the cold.

Honestly, he looked better than before. But would she ever tell him this?

No. Nope, never ever ever ever- did she mention ever yet? Ever.

If she did, he would probably tease her to no end, closing their spaces to get uncomfortably close, which, if she were honestly thinking, she probably wouldn't mind. In fact, the very idea of it made her heart start beating faster as a soft smile etched its way onto her face. It actually made her feel extremely happy. Not the kind of happiness that you feel when you hug your old friend, the kind that makes you feel giddy, makes your stomach whirl as your breath would begin to quicken in a suffocating joy. But she's a stubborn girl, always has been and always will be.

After a short silence, Axton heard his ECHO notification go off.

"You have arrived at your destination. [Tundra Express]." The computerized woman said, a blue light flashing in the top right of his H.U.D.

"Finally." He exclaimed, "We're here."

He looked at the entrance to Tundra Express. A large skull of a beast, not unusual for Pandora, resided on the end of the cliff, providing a much needed barrier for the shopping machines conveniently set up under a shade, next to a small, but dignified, snowman.

"Yes! Ammo!" Sal shouted, running gleefully towards the ammo machine, which, in his case, was not really fast.

Everyone else silently trudged along, standing around idly waiting for Roland's call.

The assassin was perched on the wooden fence of the porch, his sniper out and already scoping out his surroundings, Axton was laying in the snow, his hand over his eyes as he attempted to day dream, Sal was literally drooling over all the ammo, trying to shake the machine as the robotic Marcus responded with curses as whoever was shaking his merchandise, and Gaige was smoothing the snowman, often sending away Sal as he tried to convince her to give him money for more ammo.

A static sound similar to that when you change stations on a radio played in all of their heads, each questioning if the other has hear that. Suddenly, a blue box appeared in the top-right of their H.U.D. a portrait of Roland vaguely popping up as his voice began to come through, slightly altered by the white noise. "Finally, is the frequency ok? Can you all hear me?"

Everyone else replied with a Yeah!/Of course./ or whatever their character would say.

"Good. Listen, I forgot to mention, but my spy is a little- scratch that- a big alcoholic. So he might be out there sleeping out his recent hangover." Roland's voice showed just how much he didn't like that aspect of him, "But don't worry, he may be a drunk murderer that could kill you with one shot and makes rash decisions on a daily, but he's the best spy out there."

Just hearing Roland say that made everyone less tense, " Now, you'll have to wake him up, and nothing wakes up a hunter more than the spine-chilling screech of a varkid getting set on fire. 3 burning varkids would do: Good luck."

The radio turned back to static, everyone swiped out the tab, leaving them in the silence of the winter.

"So... did anyone bring a fire weapon?" Axton spoke, looking back at the team members, all of them regrettably shaking their heads in a disappointed matter.

Axton let out a breath of annoyance, watching as the mist of his breath vanished in the wind.

"Great."

* * *

 **Extra** :

Krieg sat next to the patient, an uncommon silent surrounding him. His thoughts weren't running anymore, they were all collected, all in the same area. It's like, every part of him knew that this was important.

The room was bleak, white rooms with white lies, wilting roses were next to the bed which laid the figure, who's eyes were glued shut by her mind, which had suffered a serious blow along with her psychical body. The drapes were open, letting the cold, dirty air into the room, making the curtains slightly flutter. The psycho still wore no shirt, but he rather wore a concerning eye as he glanced over the body every once in a while, wondering if she would ever wake up.

It's been four days: four days since he had heard her sweet voice, four days since she would give him that smirk she would always give him after every nonsensical shout he did, and it was all **his** fault.

If that dumb soldier would've just gone along, letting the dwarf teach the small girl, he wouldn't have gone down, forcing the siren, with tear-stained eyes, to waste all of her new found power to save his dumb, useless, f*cking life.

He let out a raspy sigh as his mask muffled most of the sound, and once again, like he's probably done a million times now, looked over the girl, but this time it was different, he watched her with an enraged eye, the one he got when he was facing people that threatened him.

He made his decision, he's going to kill that soldier...

He furiously got up, nearly toppling the chair as he huffed over to the door, taking a second to look back before leaving her alone again.

He **will** kill that soldier, and when he wants to kill someone, he does it in the most gruesome way possible.

Just ask the last people he threatened with death.

That is, if you could talk to a bloody, mangled, horrifying corpse.


	17. The Only Helpful Robot is a Murderer

"...Pop goes the bandit!"

The young girl shouted with glee as she jumped onto the cartoon-sized detonator, making the fully sized bandit behind her turn into a splatters on the walls that would surely be considered a work of art by the girl.

The vault hunters put their hands up as to not catch an organ in their eye as they could see the girl literally skipping towards them with a wicked smile, rocking her head side to side as she took each step.

"Whaddup, my peeps. Names' Tiny Tina and I am here to help you!" The wicked girl said as her body still shook from excitement. They had never seen someone so animated.

She was a young girl, definitely young. She looked like she was barely 12. She had a snug pink dress that had a bunny design were the skirt began. She had a brown fanny pack, showing its age there were rips and tear along the rim of it. Her left hand was free and only held a watch, while her right hand was occupied by a cut off sleeve from some random peiece of clothing, it seemed. She wore brown pants that were rolled up to her knees, exposing her mismatched socks and mismatched shoes. Surprisingly, her hair was fairly nice, being blond, her hair was short, only going down to her slender neck. The only part that truely made this whole, "kid-on-Pandora" thing look pretty cool was her bandit mask strapped onto the left side of her face, one that she wore with pride.

"Umm," The commando lowered his hands as to speak with the girl as he took cautious steps forward, keeping his newly obtained fire weapon closely to his side. "Hello, Tiny Tina... We're the vault hunters... and we heard that you could help us with finding some key?" The soldier talked at a painfully slow pace. He wasn't too sure about this girl.

"Oh! You guys are the ones that have been tearing sh!t up! You guys, are like my heroes!" The girl spun around on one foot, her mask slightly getting trudged along. "Mordy sent ya, right?"

"Yeah." Gaige chimed in, keeping her torque shotgun close to her chest in a ready position. This girl seemed crazy.

"Awesome!" She threw her hands in the air excitedly, "Alright. What I need are some of my explosives to make that train go _boom._ "

Her face turned into that of disgust as she cupped her chin with her hand. "But those damn bandits stole 'em."

She raised up an eye to the vault hunters, not even bothering to question why their guns raised she she did. "I got it."

The vault hunters all seemed puzzled, even Zer0 had a **?** over his mask. "Train?" Sal said, one of his two guns finally going back into his backpack.

"Oh yeah!" The girl looked at them with a smile, "The train has the key, I am an expert bomb-girl. What the result of those two together should be pretty obvious."

Some vault hunters nodded in response, "So, where are the bandits?" The soldier spoke up, holster into his weapon as he finally felt comfortable with the girl.

"Right, so, I don't really know how to tell you, buttt, I'll just update your ECHO so you'll know." She explained lazily.

"Now go. I'll update your thing once you get out."

Everyone quickly walked out, all being surprised when the map actually did update.

* * *

"Argh!" The soldier screamed in pain as his leg was seared with the flaming bullet, forcing him to kneel down as he used his assault rifle to shoot the remaining bandits.

It took them a while, but they had finished all but one bandit settlements. According to the map, the boy was near the exit.

"Axton!" The girl shouted, running from her cover as she shot blindly towards the bandits, quickly sliding behind a metal plate near the wounded soldier. "Get behind cover! Sal! How's those guns coming?!"

The gunzerker crouched behind broken wall, not minding the bullets whizzing by his buff arms. "Still recharging!" He leaned over the wall, successfully shooting some nomads charging them, causing their health to go down to a sliver until he heard a _click_.

"Damnit! I'm out, chica! Kreig! Shoot!" He shouted at the psycho who was running around the thin bridges hovering over them.

"THE GUN GOES CLICK, THE AXE GOES BOOM!" The psycho vaulted over a group of barrels, gouging the tongue out of a bandit to steal his medkit, before jabbing into his arm, letting out a hiss as the pain caused him to feel dizzy.

"God damn it! The psycho is out! Zer0! Status?!" The girl went lower to the ground helping out the soldier by ripping a long strip of her skirt out, wrapping it around his injured leg as she pulled him next to her.

"Guns are out, holograms gone, we are toast." The mechanical voice of the assassin let out a pessimistic phrase, dropping his head lower as to not get hit by the wandering bullets.

The soldier let out rapid pants, coughing into his hand as he saw blood over his fingers. "Kid, we can't take this one. The bastards have infinite ammo or something." He complained as he laid he head against the cool metal, lowering his empty gun down as he clench his bloody fists.

The girl stopped looking over the barrier and looked down at the fearless soldier, a scared look on her face as she saw more nomads coming towards their positions. "Fuck, fuck, **FUCK."** She slouched down, smashing the dirt with her robotic hand as it dug into the hard dirt with its sheer power. The girl looked at her hand with a blank stare before something sparked in her mind.

She looked over, realizing the enemy was surrounding them. She leaned her head back against the metal, a confident smirk on her face as he brought out her robotic hand, staring at it with a determined stare. "Let's do this."

She swiped her hand up, wincing as she felt a great strain come onto it. She held one eye open, looking at how the hand glowed a brilliant blue and whirred like crazy. She could hear the enemies shouting at them. She finally let out a shout, feeling electricity pour through her body as a giant robot came out of seemingly nowhere with blue particles surrounding him. Suddenly, everything was silent. Everyone was busy staring at the robot to really start shooting.

The robot let his head wander before slowly settling on the exhausted girl, waiting patiently for an order. The girl stared at the long forgotten robot with familiar eyes before finally giving it an order.

 **"Slaughter them."**


	18. The Mechanical Beast (Long Chapter)

The robot let out an ominous beep-like growl, sending chills down the murderers spin as Gaige had an unsure look on her face. She was hoping that she would be able to control it this time.

She looked on the underside of her wrist, remembering that she added a small timer to see how long it would last. Right now, since it barely came out, it was full, slowly declining as the robot began to consume it's fuel by hovering forward slowly, stopping inches away from the flabbergasted bandits. They have never seen a robot this close before.

The town was silent, only the howling of wind could be heard. The wind blew through the small hut-like houses that the bandits has clearly made for themselves, brushing along the metal harshly as it emitted a rattling sound, shaking the very foundation slightly. There were small dusts storms that were caused by the wind. All the vault hunters watched on with anticipation in their eyes, well, everyone but Gaige and Axton.

Gaige, instead hunkered down behind the metal sheet that she called "cover", and sat a little closer to the passed out soldier, wrapping his big arm around her shoulder as she shut her eyes tightly, her mouth forming a thin line as she awaited to hear the screams again.

Suddenly, the robot let out a numerous amount of beeps, extending its arms as blue blades partied themselves from the insides of the robot's cold hands, it's eyes turning bright red as it charged the now alerted bandits.

The first one dead was a nomad, wearing armor from the head to toe. But not even that would stop the robot's carnage. The monster grabbed the nomads shoulder, lifting it up as it stabbed his stomach, crushing his shoulder in the process. The nomad let out a painful shriek, causing all the others to start firing the bulletproof robot.

The robot threw the body into another bandit, causing them both to fly back and be penetrated by a long metal pole, one which as fallen to a slant, causing them both to cough up blood as their lungs filled with the red liquid, they both grasped at the pole. No luck, though.

The robot, not taking a seconds delay, rammed another nomad with its spiked shoulders causing him to fly into a burning trash can, which... Yeah. I don't think I could even explain the horrors on a T-Rating. As the other bandits were shocked at the brutal display, briefly taking a pause as their moral sunk lower than the earths' core. They knew they were fucked.

Some smart bandits climbed up to the bridges suspended in the air, taking aim at the robot before firing it with everything they had. Before the bandits on the floor even knew what was going on, Deathtrap landed on the one near the middle of the small, bumpy circle, burning his face with his boosters as though it was instinct for the killing machine. He spun around at a high velocity, making him appear like a blur as bandit's faces were chopped up before they could scream, they bodies following suit.

"Shoot the thing in the head!" A nomad residing on the suspended bridges shouted, "Just shoot it in the head!" His voice cracked a little. From fear? Sadness? Who knows.

The robot responded, jolting his horrifying bloodily head unit up before putting up a blocky hand to block the incoming bullets, using his jet boosters to propel himself under the bridge, causing it to break at the impact point with him flying in through it. The vault hunters could only gaze in horror as they saw the robot smash faces together, punch through guts, ignore the screams of the tortured, and just emotionlessly tear their bodies apart.

The robot hit one of the bandits off, causing him to fall on his back on the ground, groaning as he turned over, reaching in his pockets to look at a picture. The picture showed a girl, dressed with a wh-

The robot surprised him, grabbing his legs and, without skipping a beat, began to slam him around until he was nothing but a bloody stump.

The robot was covered in blood. It retracted its blue blades as it scanned the area for enemies, making sure to check within the houses and such. The robot did a sort of nod, turning around as it flew over some bodies, burning their corpses with his jet stream.

Gaige let out a relieved breath of air, finally glad that it was over. She still sat next to Axton, rubbing her nose into his neck, causing him to slightly stir in his sleep as she giggled softly, trying her hardest to forget that she just slaughtered a whole town.

"No enemies found. Perimeter now safe. Enemies slaughtered." The robotic voice slightly surprised the creator, causing her to look at the robot with a nonchalant face.

"Thank you. I guess." She looked at the timer, briefly forgetting that she added a new upgrade which made him last a whole 8 minutes. Why did she do that?

The dirt-covered man finally awoke, looking at the robot with widened eyes. "That looks badass..."

"I guess." She thinned her lips, grabbing her spare medkit she stored away for after the enemies were gone and gave it to the man. "Here, for the leg."

"Oh, thanks." He gave her a half smile, injecting the red liquid into his injured leg, promptly jolting up as he felt like he could run a mile. "These things work quick, huh." He hopped around a little, getting used to mismatched healthiness of his legs.

Gaige stood up, a small, caring smile on her face. "Where would you be without me?"

"Probably dead." He joked as he playfully punched the girl's shoulder.

What happened next, none of them could have really accounted for.

The robot let out an digital growl, one that Gaige has heard before. "Oh, shit. Look out!"

She used her robot hand to shove the man away, causing him to bounce on the ground a couple of times before fully rebounding, looking up at the freshly dug hole that currently was where he was last standing, the robot's hand was still stuck in it. It jolted its head at the soldier, it's eyes turned red, another pair of blue blades appeared on his other hand. It was slowly turning towards the man, slightly moving his shoulder plates as it did so.

"Enemy found. Exterminate." The soldier's eyes stayed calm, while he was scanning his location, looking for some environmental advantage that he could use.

Upon seeing, none, he called to the others. Not letting his eyes dart away from the robot. "Guys, some help?"

The robot charged, pointing its boosters away from it as it extended a bladed arm. The soldier quickly responded, waiting until the last second, to make sure it couldn't recalculate, to dodge it, using the jagged structure of the robot as a jump pad as he hopped over the robot, landing with a roll.

"Today would be nice!" He yelled, watching the robot slam his blades into the concrete wall.

"Right!" The remaining vault hunters yelled.

The assassin jumped down, somehow landing softly, the gunzerker, still having empty weapons, cracked his knuckles as he appeared from behind the broken wall, a confident smile on his face, and Gaige pulled out her trustworthy wrench, spinning it in her hand as she held it with purpose.

They almost looked like heroes.

The robot spun its head 180 degrees, facing its previously thought friendlies. "Friendlies terminated. Kill all enemies." In its cold, metal head, it marked everyone as red. Even its creator.

The robot easily pulled its blades out, floating over as it seemed like a giant. "Time to fuck it up!" Sal yelled, being the only one to run forward.

"Sal! Wait!" Gaige called after, her eyes widening as the robot threw him away effortlessly, causing him to crash through a couple of houses before coming to a stop. He spat blood.

"1 down. 2 to go." The robot approached the team.

"Scatter." The assassin said, running to the right of the robot as the others followed suit, Gaige running to the left as Axton ran down the middle.

Axton was the first to move, ripping off a pipe from a nearby wall, ignoring the water splashing his angered face as he ran towards the robot, dodging its strike by ducking under it before hopping on its arm, forcing it to attack itself as he briefly dodged another on of its attack, doing a combat roll as he landed, running behind the robot as he stuck it between two large plates, hoping that he struck something important as he ran behind cover, looting the dead corpses for guns.

Zero quickly followed suit, exposing his large, thin blue sword before taking a blow from the robot, surprising it as the attack went through, and "Zero" ran through the robot. While it was confused, quickly zipping its head around, it heard a cold, dark voice. "Up here."

The robot shot its head up, nearly breaking his bolts, barely seeing Zero come down and attempt to slice his head in half, but to no avail as his sword broke in half, causing Zero to look on flabbergasted, softly falling in front of the robot before it quickly jumped off of him, doing a backflip away as to avoid a hit, which it tried to do, attacking the ground instead.

"What was this robot made out of?" He questioned calmly, dodging all attacks the giant dished out before adding in some kicks of his own.

"Just some materials I found here and there..." Gaige clutched her wrench, waiting for an opening to attack.

"Of course." Zero grimly remarked, dodging another one of his attacks before jumping next to the girl. "Weak points. Where are they?"

"Umm," the girl racked her brain, "Oh! His back armor plate is weak. I didn't think anyone would attack there."

"Thanks." The assassin gave a **:)** emoticon on his head before jumping back into battle, bouncing off the robot's head and up to the water tower, ripping off one of the water pipes as the soldier did.

The robot stared up, watching the motionless assassin falter a little before quickly dropping. Deathtrap reacted in a flash, using his rotating body to spin with his hands up, mimicking the way a blender would work. The assassin predicted this, grinning in his mask as he saw the robot get bombarded with explosives, causing it to briefly fall down. His falling clone exploded, giving the robot a final punch to its exposed back as one of its back armor plates tore off, revealing an orange material underneath. His real body momentarily flickering in and out of reality as he stood next to Gaige, putting his kunai back into his side pocket.

"Do we attack the orange part?" Axton questioned, lumbering his new torque assault rifle over his shoulder as he gazed over the stumbling robot.

"Um, no." The genius rolled her wrench over his fingers, "I have to manually remove the orange part with my special wrench."

The soldier tsked, moving his assault rifle into his hands in a ready position. "Never easy, huh." He had a cheeky grin.

"It'd be better if we exposed his whole backside first." The assassin commented, watching the timer until he could use another clone in his mask.

"Right."

"We should probably work faster then." The soldier added, "Looks like it's started to work again." He glared at the stable robot as it started to slowly turn, once again, towards them.

"Hostiles are too powerful. Easy mode: off." It's eyes turned a bloody purple, his name now gaining a skull in their huds.

"Ah, shit." The girl face palmed, "Totally forgot I added that."

* * *

Everyone panted hard, the wounds and scratches on their skin were getting too hard to keep up with. It was already midday, the sun beat down on them as its radiant glow illuminated the blood on the robot's cold body. The air was filled with death. Probably the rotting corpses. Axton stabbed himself with another medkit.

"These things could only do so much, and we're going to run out." He gazed at the handful of medical supplies left that they had stashed in a corner. "We have to end this fight."

"Easier said than done." Gaige had a new cut over her eye as she lowered her head onto her legs. "I made this guy with the intentions of beating an army."

"What?- Never mind, that's a question for later. But first, we gotta knock those remaining plates off." He peered over his cover, watching as the robot paced the town, his purple eyes scanning the areas.

"Still can't believe he got the assassin..." Axton looked over to Zero's cut a bruised body with somber eyes, his eyes trailing the long cut running down his stomach, and straight through his right leg.

Gaige noticed the hopeless look on his face, and placed her hand over his resting hand. "Don't worry, I heard that Doc Mercy is the best in the biz." She gave him the best calming smile she could right now, but even she wasn't sure.

"Yeah..." He squeezed her hand, "No point in getting hung over that. I think it's time to plan our attack."

Gaige quickly nodded, not letting go of his hand, and even at a time like this, it made her heart skip a beat that he wasn't letting go either. "This is what I noticed: arms are his primary fighting weapons. So, that being, our best chances of killing this thing would be to dismember his arms, or at least break them."

Gaige slowly nodded, "Yeah, ok. But I'm pretty sure I used some sorta alien material or something. It can't be broken."

"Everything has a weakness. Superman, a God, is afraid of a rock. So, we just have to find _our rock_." He felt so clever.

"But there's one thing I don't get..." The girl looked over the barrier, "He's suppose to have a timer, he shoulda disappeared ages ago..."

Axton followed the robot, ducking down as he thought it was going to look at their direction, pulling Gaige down with his hand that held hers. "Glitch maybe?"

"Maybe..." The girl sounded skeptical, making a mental note to check it out later.

A man watching the screen laughed uproariously, stuffing his face with buttered popcorn. "Such idiots."

"Right, whatever." The soldier looked over once more, narrowing his eyes as it was trained on the killer robot, his eyes suspiciously glancing over the self inflicted wound he had caused earlier. "Something else I noticed, he's been taking the same path for a while now... Alright, here's the plan."

The robot followed its same past monotonously, making sure to check the same windows everytime it did so. It was programmed to, after all. It wasn't until it reached the propane_tank_pdf area that it noticed something different: there were small hairs coming from the back of the counter. It closed itself by the window, using its claw to reach under the windowsill and drag the heavy object out. It was a corpse. It's dead face had its mouth open, its expression of terror faintly visible on the flesh. The robot was about to throw it away, before it felt a hard weight fall on its shoulder.

"Missed me?" The dark voice of a soldier fell on the robot's audio devices, "You will soon."

-A few minutes ago-

There were a couple of stick figures drawn in the dirt, one with a skirt and ponytails, and the other with a handsome haircut, and muscles. The last was a robot, big and mean with knifes for hands.

"Alright, one of the places this hunk of metal mostly circles is the middle of the town, near here." He tapped the drawing of the layout of the town, marking an X over the center of the town. "This gives us more room, giving us an advantage. But we gotta get him there."

Gaige nodded along.

"So I'm thinking that if we somehow get him over there from one of the more compressed area of the town, let's just say, here." He circles the part of the map full of houses. "We could put it behind us, creating a make believe wall with our presence that will force him to stay in the middle." He drew a line, boxing the center of the town with it.

He snapped his fingers, "That's right, the propane tanks! We'll set up a decoy, forcing him to stand by the propane tank and launch him to the center!" He drew in the propane tanks and a small stick figure for the decoy.

"This actually might work..." The girl smiled at the man's intelligence.

"Hold on, that's just the first part." The man gave the girl a cheeky grin. "The next part would be a lot better."

-Present-

The robot let out a drone, using its free hand to try to smash the intruder, only to be tricked into hitting himself again, as the man quickly moved onto his back, holding onto one of the small nooks between his head and body. Its right arm was separated, it cut the joints connecting them.

"Told ya you'd miss me." The soldier said mockingly, making sure that the leg was completely useless by using his legs to kick it off its torso.

The robot let out another small drone, this time, a presence of anger was hidden behind the dull sound. It's head swiveled around as it watched its arm helplessly fall to the ground, it's blade still staying on the tips of the hand.

"Now Gaige!" Axton shouted, making sure that he had a hard grip on the robot's blind spot.

"Alright!" She popped her head out of the room watching over the town, pulled the heavy assault rifle into her hands, steadying the shot before taking a deep breath, slowly exhaling as she squeezed the trigger, nearly falling back as the recoil hit her.

She hit the tank, causing a small explosion next to the robot, causing it to get blasted away from the array of orange colors, Axton shouting cheers of excitement as he used its body as a shield. Beiing as it was hit at an angle, it spun crazily, nearly sending the man strapped onto its back flying from the sheer velocity.

It fell face first into the dirt, it's bladed arm laying still on the ground as the robot had been momentarily knocked down. Axton hopped off, grabbing Gaige as she hopped down from the upper floor, receiving the assault rifle from her.

"Hey, going off script here. Grab his blade over there, we could use it."

Gaige quickly nodded, running over to where the blade was lodged due to the explosion.

As Gaige was set off, Axton slowly walked forward, reloading the weapon as he wanted to make sure he got every shot to count. He saw how the robot was starting to get up. Frowning at this, he unloaded a shot into the robot's back, forcing it to stay down and loosened one of the remaining armor plates.

"Stay down." He was done with this, he just wanted to take the bomb, get the key, and kill Jack. Was that too much to ask for?

The stubborn robot started getting up, only to be put down again, it's armored plate flying off this time.

"Y'know, I came on this planet to kill people and get loot. Not to have my day and ammo wasted, and friends nearly killed!" He shouted, his scowl growing larger as he unloaded another shot into the beast, reloading once more.

"Gotta admit, you were almost a fun enemy." He stood over the mechanic beast, stomping it's orange weakspot to hold it down, making it release a mechanical groan as it could feel it's insides being disrupted. It unleashed multiple shots into the last armored plate, not even giving a damn that the blast was ripping his pants up.

 ** _Fling._**

The last armored plate blew away in the wind, exposing a large rectangule of some orange material.

He sighed, surprised as the girl spoke up. "Releasing some anger, big guy?"

He grinned sheepishly, "Were you here the whole time?"

The girl giggled. "It wasn't that far away, y'know."

"Can we just end this." He put a hand over his face, stomping the robot one more time before walking up to its head, planting his boot there.

"Sure." She groaned, lifting up the heavy claw over her shoulder, and with the help of gravity, she threw it down with a loud shout, causing a electric show over the robot as she could feel her robotic hand become less tense. Less... Burdened.

Axton let out a small chuckle, "I guess that's that."

"Yup." She stared at her creation, then to all it destroyed. Looked at all the corpses it generated; corpses that were alive an hour ago.

She sighed wearily, "Yup."

There was a long pause, Axton looking around awkwardly before settling on looking at the girl's face, and how indifferent it looked. It scared him.

"C'mon kid, let's go." He started to walk, taking a second to pause to make sure that she was behind him, and to his relief, she was. They walked side to side.

"Hey, Ax." She didn't even bother to look up.

"Yeah?"

"Can I hold your hand?"

"...Sure." He looked down to the girl, a worried look overtaking his face.

She grabbed his hand, her arm wrapping around his arm as she leaned into him, using her other arm to gently grab his arm. "Thanks, Ax."

"Don't mention it, kid." He slung the rifle over his shoulder, letting the strap do the work so he wouldn't have to hold it.

She looked back at the dead robot, watching as the oil began to leak out, it's circuitry was hanging out too. She looked forward again, shutting her eyes as she, once again, leaned on Axton. Letting him guide them to Tiny Tina.

F*ck Pandora.

* * *

 **Extra** :

Axton was outside Tina's cave before it struck him.

"Oh, crap."

He looked over to Gaige with a sheepish smile, who looked back in confusion, shaking her head as she asked what's wrong.

He let out a slow chuckle. "We forgot about the injured people."


	19. Good Job, Soldier

**Since this will probably go unnoticed, I actually had intentions of ending this fanfic with Axton dying in the previous chapter. So... Yeah.**

* * *

"Holy crap!"

Tina's shrill voice rang out in her cave upon seeing the vault hunters arrive bruised, and some looking awfully close to death.

"The hell happened?" She ran towards the two standing vault hunters, her face looking shocked as she used a remote in her pocket to close the door, to prevent whatever hurt them to get in.

"My creation went haywire, so we had to destroy it." Gaige addressed bluntly, moving the assassin's weight around to hold him up.

"That sounds... Bad." Tina never really knew how to act in serious situations. "Umm... Did you get my bombs?"

"Oh, yeah." The soldier handed the big rockets to the small girl, turning his attention back to laying the gunzerker down on an empty seat next to a table. It was cluttered with tea play sets and crumpet crumbles.

"Sweet! I'll... Um... Put these back in the trunk of my ladies if you know what I mean." She chuckled awkwardly, earning a blank stare from Gaige."Right."

She quickly ran into her garage, pressing the big red button to close the door as she let out a big exhale, putting a hand up to her head.

"'If you know what I mean.'- What were you thinking Tina!" She scolded herself in a quiet yell, "Now the badass vault hunters think I'm weird and awkward and... Ugh!"

She let herself fall on her bed, her mind torturing her by replaying the awkward scene over and over, each time, noticing even more thinks that added to the awkwardness. Such as how her voice sounded or how she stood.

She grabbed her pink pillow, causing her small teddy to fall face first. She used the pillow to smother her scream, shaking her thin legs up and down as she released her frustration. She looked up, exhausted over the small session of self-deprecation, and noticed her teddy bear being knocked over.

"And now Mrs. Teddylicious is dead! God damn it!" She slammed her head into her bed, rolling around before stopping on her side, facing the fallen teddy bear.

She softly picked it up, holding it up at arms length as she admired its craftsmenship. How the chocolate brown still retained its visually pleasing factor even after years of use, how the threads, even though some were sticking out, were holding all the internal stuffing together; not even one sliver of a crack showing. What she liked most, was the button eyes. Even though one was big and the other was small and fragile, it pulled the bear together. She couldn't explain it, but it gave it a sorta comforting stare, even if it was just stuffing with some leather around it. Maybe she's just crazy.

She propped the bear up on her bed once more, setting down the pillow before she hopped back up, walking to a small window next to her garage as she looked out to the exhausted vault hunters resting on her worn chairs. She smiled fondly, swearing to herself that she will be as badass as them, maybe even more, if that was possible. For in her eyes, they were the heroes of thiis story.

The inspired girl spun around with a confident grin, determined eyes taking over her embarrassed ones as she stuck a strong pose.

"I will do it." She swore to herself in a soft whisper. "I WILL DO IT!"

The vault hunters turned their heads towards the closed garage, exchanging confused looks as they could hear sparks coming from inside and, weirdly enough, squishy sounds as well. As the garage doors opened slowly, Tina stood proud with her clenched hands on her waist, two giant stuffed rabbits with rockets strapped to them were next to her.

"Ohhoho these ladies are primed and ready to DANCE!" She rubbed her hands maliciously, "Take 'em, take 'em take 'em take 'em!"

She rapidly spat out, the two remaining vault hunters stared over to the spastic girl before taking a while to think.

"Two player mission?" Axton stood up, stretching his arms and legs before walking over to the personal ammo machine set up in Tina's room.

"Two player mission." Gaige confirmed, a devious grin on her face as she followed Axton, giving a small thanks to Tina as she grabbed the two bombs shoving them into her digital inventory before joking Axton in restocking their ammunitions, taking extra SMG ammo as it was her favorite type of weapon.

"Oh, by the by, Tina," Axton started, giving the young girl a side glance, "remember to take zero and sal back into town. We're gonna be kinda busy ripping the vault key from Handsome Jack's cold dead hands."

Tina felt a shiver run down her spin as she stood rigid, giving the soldier a salute before spouting out, with a cheerful smile, "Yes, sir!"

Axton smirked, giving her a small chuckle, rubbing her head as he walked by, "I'm counting on you kid. Let's go Gaige!"

Tina squeaked, giving herself an internal reminder to never wash that part of her head, standing in a daze as she circled the spot with her fingers. _A vault hunter touched me!_ She thought.

"Alright, alright." Gaige groaned, purchasing the final packs of ammo she needed before running off to join the soldier who was standing next to the button to open the gate.

She quickly looked back and, as she was still running forward, yelled, "You better not kill them!"

Tina eagerly nodded, watching as the two silhouettes of the most badass people on the planet ran out into the cold, turning right as Tina managed to quickly update their map.

She let out a huff of air, looking back to the two unconscious men as she thought out loud.

"Doing this will be the most important thing of important things I'll ever do in my whole life..." She scrunched up her face, "Only problem, I have no idea how to..."

* * *

Axton rolled to the right, dodging the big claw as Gaige shot the mechanical man in the back of the head, causing him to look back while the bullets flew off.

"Get out of there vault hunters! You can't take Wilhelm down!" Roland repeated once more as he could see how powerful Wilson had gotten over the time.

Axton grunted, remembering the mysterious woman's words as he called Roland. "Don't worry- we got this!"

He switched out his assault rifle for his high-damage shotgun, shooting the robots' arm as sparks and shrapnel flew into the air, digging itself into the white snow. Wilhelm roared, taking another swing at Axton as it successfully landed, smacking him in the stomach as he flew back, once more taking a couple of bounces before groggily getting back up.

"I'm so tired of getting fucking hurt." He spat out the leaking blood from his mouth, taking up his shotgun again as he switched it out once more for a rocket launcher. It had the color of a pale orange, with splatters of blue, red, and pink scattered around the design of the gun, appearing as though the designer used it for paintball practice. It had a jagged tip, with a small hoisted on top for easy reloading.

Gaige's eyes widen, she knows that gun...

"Gaige! Get back, quick!" Axton shouted at the top of lungs, waiting 2 seconds before pulling the trigger, feeling the massive recoil shoot him back as 6 rockets shot out.

The explosion was... Epic. The blast radius nearly filled the small arena, filling it up with a brilliant orange, the white tidal wave of snow being the after party as everything settled down, the only thing in the middle being William's charred and broken body, if you could even call it that anymore.

Axton laid in the snow with a crazed smile on his face as he still felt the heat plastered on his face. He stood up, brushing away the removed snow as he looked over to the robot's body, letting out a cheer of joy. "Hell yeah!"

He ran over to the body, running his rugged fingers over the burnt metal as he enjoyed the feeling of the heat still radiating from the blast. His brain sparked, suddenly remembering the only other person near the blast zone. "Gaige..."

He jolted his head around, noticing the small bit of skirt sticking up from the snow, quickly rushing over as he slid next to the small sliver of fabric. He dug as fast as a dog, throwing out the snow over his shoulder, making a big pile when he found the unconscious body of the girl. Axton concluded that the blast must've knocked her out as he picked her up, taking long strides to leave before the mysterious woman came back on his H.U.D.

"W-Wait!" There was a long pause of silence, "That power core over there looks rare! You should take it."

"Sorry, lady, but I don't take orders fro-"

"Holy hell... You actually took out Wilhelm." Roland came onto his ECHO, his static profile picture contrasting his shocked tone. "Hold on, my ECHO is picking something up... That power core, it looks like Hyperion tech! Can you pick that up, soldier?"

Axton sighed, attempting to glare at the new objective before realizing that he couldn't. He turned around, the girl's ponytails swinging as he walked over to the core, shifting his arms as he touched it, nearly shocked that it instantly went into his inventory.

"Got it." The soldier confirmed, walking over to the nearest traveling station after he realized that the only exit was blocked.

"Good job, soldier."

He clicked the floating fast-travel button, browsing the list until he found Sanctuary, pressing it as he saw the countdown begin to go down, staring at the girl as he felt a twinge in his chest, his heart being drowned in the dark liquid of guilt. "Yeah... No problem, Roland."


	20. What's the Problem, Soldier?

Axton turned in his bed, his face scrunching up before he eventually opened his exhausted eyes to look up at the ceiling. He rolled onto his back, locking his hands together as he stared at the rugged ceiling. He couldn't sleep. He gazed at the clock.

2:23 A.M.

He let out a long groan before thinking back, trying to remember something that could be the reason for his lack of sleep.

It was the night of the mission, and they were all staying in the HQ, being Roland felt guilty about sending them all to fight Wilhem (He didn't know about the deathtrap incident, and that was fine to Axton.) and being that they all came back bruised, his guilt tripled. He showed Axton to the rooms, opening a small door to the left of the stairs to reveal a long hallway, doors lined up along the walls.

Axton remembers the first thing that zipped into his mind once he got back, to go to Doctor Zed.

He opened the door with his snow covered boot, making sure the girl's head wasn't going to hit the door frame as he walked into the doctors office. Ignoring the horrible stench of death that engulfed the "office", he went straight over to the farthest available bed, taking brief moments to look over to the other vault hunters stuck in the white beds with I.V bags hung up on a coat hanger, the tube leading straight into their inner wrists. He took a brief pause when he passed the wounded siren, still remembering his plans, he continued to drop the girl off, laying her gently on the bed next to the siren before he went off to look for the "Doctor."

He reluctantly left her, waving over to the timid-looking male nurse to check on her before walking over to the small white curtain separating the work space and his office. At least, he thought it was white, but the red and black stains on it could signify that it's not.

"You tell Doctor Mercy that he could shove his medical degree up his fat a-"

"Sorry to interrupt your _friendly_ conversation, Doc." The commando snarked, swinging the curtains open, having to slightly duck down to get inside, before he stood before his desk. "But you have a new patient."

The doctor stared Axton down with a stern face, before he leaned his head over to the phone. "I'll call you later."

He put down the phone into the receiver, propping his elbows on the table, using his left hand to clasp around his right fist, he looked up at the soldier. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, it's not me you're doing it for; it's my friend, Gaige."

The doctor gave him a little smile, "Well, let's go see what is wrong with Gaige."

He stood up in his chair, rolled his white sleeves and put on some gloves, ending his little transformation by putting on a white mask over his mouth. He briefly walked out, examining his working room, a little scoff as he looked back to Axton.

"Isn't this the fifth vault hunter that's been in my hospital?" He jabbed, "You vault hunters really need to be more careful when you go out there."

Axton's eye twitched, his fist balled up before he quickly let it go. "Yeah. I guess we should."

He decided that he probably shouldn't start an argument with the only person that could help out his teammates.

Zed felt a pang of guilt before his soft face had a stern thin line, "I didn't mean anything by it, I was just kidding. I know that nobody could know what's coming to to them, and you guys being vault hunters, the dangers when you go out are increased ten-fold."

He used his hand to rub his wrist, not minding the semi-pleasant grating noise of the cheap white gloves, and looked at the soldier, an apologetic tint over his eyes.

Axton solemnly looked at his feet. _He's right. We do face more dangers than anyone here... Maybe I shoul-_

Axton wiped his sweaty head as he was back in his bed, the memory was still vivid in his mind. He could even remember how the doctor smelled: like death and booze.

He smirked half-heartedly, pondering how such a man would even be trusted by the people of Sanctuary. Then again, he doesn't think most people on this planet would even know how to spell their own name.

Creeeeaaak

An elongated creak emitted from the worn but study door, which caused his head to shoot up as he quickly swiped his revolver from under his pillow, pointing it rigidly at the door. With one of his eyes closed, he kept his aim straight on the door, when a slim figure waddled in. Axton tightened his grip, as be began to slowly squeeze the trigger.

"Who are you?"

No answer.

The dark figure slowly took heavy steps forward, rocking side to side as it did so, making Axton squirm a little. The dark figure took a step into the bright moonlight shining through his window, and to his surprise, it was Gaige.

She was wearing a borrowed T-Shirt that Axton had given her. It was a plain red shirt, and while it fit Axton perfectly, to her, it was like a dress.

"Oh, Gaige." He started, realizing that she was started to walk towards him. "What are you doing here?"

He lowered his gun, leaning over to his right to turn on his dim lamp next to his bed, turning back over to Gaige as he was going to ask her another question, quickly shutting up as her eyes were shut. Her body was still, and she stood unwavering at the side of his bed before getting under his blanket, extending her slender arms around Axton's chest as she pulled him into her, nuzzling her face into his shoulder, making the hight difference very apparent.

"Umm..." Axton couldn't even react, it all happened so fast! His face shown bright red as his first reaction was to try to get the girl off her, before he quickly stopped himself.

 _She was... Sleepwalking._ He thought, using his finger to move the delicate loose strand from her sleeping face.

Now, Axton wasn't extremely superstitious. He only believed in some things, such as how aliens exist, don't piss ghosts, that weak pearlescents exist, and, most importantly, to never wake up a sleepwalker. He could still remember the horror stories with great detail.

He shuddered, exhaling deeply as he swung his arm around her shoulder, letting it dangle as he pulled her in, noticing how a grin appeared on her face as he did. He put his other hand under his head, looking up at the ceiling with a thin line over his lips. He felt _embarrassed_ , an emotion that the soldier wasn't used to feeling. He shook his head, looking down to the girl who was currently cuddling him. He smiled. He moved his arm from the back of his head and grabbed the end of the blanket on her side, draping it over her shoulder as if sank down lazily, conforming into a failed mimic of the girl's shape.

He laid his head back on the pillow, and slowly drifted away, forgetting his sleeping struggles as the room began to feel warm. The combined body heat was enough to melt the cold steel of his problems.

His head seemed to sink deeper into the cotton silk pillow, his shoulders loosened up as he let out a small sigh.

He seems to have found his problem.

Her.

* * *

"Gaige, wake up."

The warm voice of a man awoke the mentioned girl, causing her to stir around as she rubbed her legs together.

She groaned, "Whaat...?"

"My arms are dead again." He stated blandly, a little chuckle following suit.

The girl was confused, not quite sure what he mean as she slowly opened her. Her eyes changed from "tired" to "shocked" in a quick second, a soft Yelp escaping her as she realized that she, once again, awoke in his arms.

"H-H-How?" She stammered out, her hands shaking as they gripped on his shirt tightly, her face set ablaze as she rapidly rubbed her legs together.

"Well, um, you were sleepwalking, and I've heard the stories, so I didn't wake you up." He stated with a boyish smirk, "Y'know, the usual."

"N-No!" She exclaimed, "This never happens! In fact, this didn't happen! If you tell anyone, I might legit die from embarrassment."

She smothered her face in the side of his stomach, softly hitting him as he chuckled fondly. "Don't worry, I won't tell a soul. Now can you get off me? I got something to do today, believe it or not."

She let out ragged breaths, putting a hand over her heart as she hoped he didn't feel it. "Alright; just don't tell anyone or I'll kick your ass."

He still couldn't take her insults seriously.

"Right, right." He resigned, using his free hand to draw an _X_ over his heart, "Cross my heart and hope to die."

She huffed, a small pout sprouting on her face as she quickly rolled off, a small spring her step as she scurried out of the room as quick as she could.

Once she was out, she rested herself along the wall outside his room, fading out the noises of Axton getting out of bed and openly complaining about how his arm felt nonexistent.

"Damn it." She used her normal fist to hit the wall, "I accidentally fell asleep!"

She let herself slide down the wall, thinking over her plan softly under her breath. "Pretend to sleep walk, get in his bed and kiss him! Easiest plan ever, and my genius self fell asleep before I could!"

She cursed at herself, slapping her forehead repeatedly. "Tomorrow night, for sure."

She pulled herself up, standing still before her face broke out again, putting a timid thumb against her bottom lip as she could still remember the warm, and started to day dream herself kissing him, and began to wonder to other things, but I can't describe them here: wrong rating, her face becoming redder as she swooned herself, walking with shakey legs towards her room.

"One day!" She cried out.

A few quiet moments passed before Axton finally came from behind the door post, his face concerned as he finished his memory about the doctor visit.

Axton was sitting outside Gaige's small station, taking some periodical walks around to see the other vault hunters as he waited for the doctor to come back from his checkup with Gaige.

"Hey, Axton..." He softly called, Axton quickly coming in as the sight of Gaige strapped up machines made him feel sick. "Was Gaige involved in anything that could've caused tremendous stress and/or any damage to the head area?"

He was looking away from Axton, giving him the view of his back as he was looking at some paper.

Some images of Deathtrap and the radiant light from the explosion flashed in his mind. "Yeah. I think so."

He solemnly nodded, turning to face the soldier. "Yup, that'd explain it."

The soldier shot him a puzzled stare.

"Have you ever heard of the mental disorder known as, Bipolar?" He took a seat in the metal chair next to the bed.

Axton slowly nodded, looking over to Gaige. "What does that mean though, Doc?"

"It means that she will sometimes have severe fluctuations in mood- from happiness to sadness, for example." He continued, "Not only that, but her mind would be extremely active, going from thinking about food to wondering how to tame a bear or something. Fortunately, it's treatable with the right medicine, which was why I have been meaning to ask you..."

Axton inwardly groaned, already knowing where this was going.

"I don't have the medicine, but I do know where to find the ingredients." He had a smug smile on his face, waving around the paper he was holding earlier to reveal that it was actually a map, with a red X marking a seemingly random location, a string of a black line following it in segments, looping and turning in the most random places.

A treasure map essentially.

Axton sighed, "Alright. I'll do that later. But is she good to go home?"

Zed nodded, "It's not a that severe stage, but just keep a close eye on her. I heard that people with Bipolar act on every little thought they think of.

Axton came back to reality, watching the girl close her door with a sigh, quickly turning around to change.

He threw off his sleeping clothes, making sure to close the window and door before doing so as to not be spied on again. (He didn't know that having a crazy fanclub was part of the Vault hunting business.)

He opened his small wardrobe, throwing on his brown jacket with his old camo pants. He gazed over to his wall containing a paper filled with writing, making sure to put it in a safe place in his backpack as he swung it on, grabbing the ammo pouches located next to them and locking them on with ease. He took a quick second looking at himself in the mirror, quickly gliding his fingers through his blonde locks before nodding to himself, showing off a few poses in the mirror before tightening his combat boots, walking straight out as he didn't stop until he met a certain siren.

"Ready for the date?"


	21. Ghost Stories

**A.N.** A chapter with Maya in it? That's just ludicrous...

* * *

The nonchalant siren looked over to the sound of the voice, a smile breaking out on her pale face.

"Yeah, I've only been waiting for 4 days!" She joked, enjoying the company of the soldier after her long absence.

"Well, I mean, you were in a coma." He shot back, shooting her his traditional boyish smirk that sent her heart running amok. "Thanks again, for saving my life."

The usually confident siren glanced away, hiding her burning face as she let out a timid, no problem.

She rubbed her wrist, not minding the awkward silence since she had been out of commission for such a long time.

Axton let out a quick chuckle, walking forward before giving her a gesture to follow, which she quickly did. "Still surprised you said yes to this date thing. I thought you would be angry at me for draining all of your energy..."

Maya didn't regret anything. "Hey, I chose to help you, it would be dumb of me if I got angry at you for something I did."

"Still though..."

"Still nothing. I did it of my own volition and I would gladly do it again. You mean a lot to me Axton..." She put her hands behind her back, her pale face turning red as she had just realized what she said.

Axton didn't reply, he could only stare at the woman, a woman so rare that most could only wish they could be in their present vicinity, and she had just admitted that she would put her life in risk just for a lowly soldier like him.

Axton thinned his lips, following the girl down the stairs as they quickly passed through the bacon-smelling lab and out the door, giving a small wave of their head as the guard outside saluted them as if they were heroes. Axton chuckled mildly at this.

They were nearing the costume station when the siren decided to break the tension. "So, where are we going?"

Axton began acting like normal and gave her a sidelong glance, a smirk on his face. "You'll see."

The siren gave a puzzled face in return before breaking out into a smug smile mirroring his own.

 _Now what could he be thinking of.._ She though before the soldier clicked the fast travel station, putting his thumb in his pockets as he chose an area.

* * *

"Please! I don't know anything!"

The hyperion soldier shouted at the top of his lungs, his hands writhing around frantically as he attempted to seemingly jump out of the bounds put upon him by a tired soldier.

"Alright then." He simply responded, grabbing his long, bloody knife and jamming it into his leg, leaning close into his face. "Then tell me someone who might?"

The night was cold, the only light coming from the weirdly shaped entrance to the cave, the weirdly large moon being its source. Snow still fell from the sky, making people wonder if it's a permanent weather since it has been doing so for the past week! Starting ever since that train blew up.

Axton wiped his sweaty face, some streaks of blood left lingering on his stone cold face. He was exhausted.

The man let out muffled whimpers as he forced his mouth shut, tears beginning to well up on his eyes as he has one open to stare at the ruthless man. "P-Please, man. I know nothing! J-Just lemme go!"

Axton wasn't pleased with this response, his mouth thinning as he narrowed his brows.

"If you tell me who would know anything about the tapes, I'll let you go." He twisted the knife that was still latched into his legs, earning him several shouts of pain and anguish that caused the torturer to wince.

The broken man was hunched over, his shaggy hair looming over his downcasted eyes. His armor no longer shined with the bright yellow it once did, it was now covered with red, turning the yellow into a orange hue. The soldier tilted his head up, slapping the man a couple of times to get his attention before he passed out.

"Hey, hey! Right here, buddy!"

The man let out a wicked chuckle before he jolted down, leaving himself dangling as he passed out from all the pain.

The soldier let out a sigh, looking over the hunched over figure, his brows slightly narrowing. "Fuck."

He pulled the knife out, using some rags he had brung along to tie around his leg, effectively stopping the blood flow as he did a quick pull to make sure it was tight, and gave a slight nod. He went around to the back of the man, cutting off his restraints as he grabbed his shoulder as to make sure he didn't fall down, laying him down on the floor as he gazed over him.

He hadn't hurt him a lot, only a couple of bruises and scratches over his face, nothing that would render him handicap though.

He groaned, knowing how hard it would be to get him to tell him now that he had cut the ropes-and not only were they the remaining pieces of rope he had- but they costed a shit ton!

He lazily walked over to the fire he had set up, extending his arms over it as he warmed himself up, looking over to the body as he leaned against the rock wall, letting himself fall down it into a sitting position, leaning his head back as he rummaged around his thoughts, trying to find out why he was doing this in the first place.

He had a smile on his face, _Oh, right. It's all for her._

He closed his eyes, falling into an uncertain sleep as the man he had just tortured slept across from him.

...

Axton awoke in a jolt, feeling a sharp pain in his shoulder as it felt numb, he let out a groan as he looked up, seeing the sadistical smile on the broken man.

"Oh, did you sleep well?"

* * *

"Y'know, you never told me where we're going!"

The siren shouted over the roaring wind as she kept a keen eye on the road, running over skags without a care.

The soldier opened his eyes, quickly shielding them as the sun surprised him. "What do you mean? I thought I told you?"

There was a bump, signifying another skag dying.

"No you didn't. You just told me to follow my map." She swerved around, dodging the rocks that protruded from the sides of the road.

The soldier yawned, stretching his arms aimlessly into the air as he rubbed the sleepiness over his eyes. Honestly, when did he start getting barely any sleep?

"Well, after finding that one tape mentioning how Jack found you," He rested on the mounted rocket launcher of the grey runner, not minding the slight bumps that hit his chin every so often, "I decided to find more."

He didn't say anything else, knowing that the siren needed no further information.

"No way..." She let out an impressed chuckle, her lips resorting back to their usual smirk as she leaned back into her seat and drive with one hand, the other resting on the car door, mindlessly tapping away at it. "Did you actually..?"

Axton finished her thought for her, "Yup."

Axton leaned back once more, putting his hands behind his head as he began to dream once more.

* * *

"...I mean, yeah." Axton answered his rhetorical question, a pained grin on his face as he looked up to the shaggy haired Hyperion worker, enjoying how his face twisted into an anger that he's seen many times before.

"You sonufa.." His lowered voice barley registering as a whisper as he started to think of ways to kill the putrid man.

Now, messing with a trained soldier with nothing to lose was his first mistake, taking the knife out of the soldier was his second.

Once the knife was painfully jerked out, Axton struck like a viper, punching the man square in the balls, using his immediate reaction of hunching over to bring his fist straight up his jaw, sending him jaggering backwards as he stood there in a daze before he hunched over once more, this time to throw up.

Axton winced, he didn't really like using that move, but when someone has you pinned down with a knife and their genitals are in plain view, it was obvious what he had to do.

"You.. You..." The broken man spoke once more, his voice betraying him as it cracked many times. "You ASSHOLE! IM GOING TO RIP YOU TO SHREDS, FORCE A PIG TO EAT YOU, AND SEND THE SHIT TO YOUR FAMILY."

Axton narrowed his brows, noticing just how much he sounded like his old pal, Kreig. He quickly stood up and took a fighting stance, clenching his right fist only since his left was completely immobilized. That still doesn't mean that the chances were in his favor.

"AND THEN I WILL FORCE YOU DOWN ON THE GROUND AND RIP OFF BITS OF SKIN UNTIL YOU SLOWLY BLEED TO DEATH!" He threw his arms around, stepping into his purple vomit as tears of anger streamed from his bloodshot eyes.

"Are you all talk or are you actually gonna do it?" The cocky soldier gave him a smirk, circling the rage-fueled worker with careful eyes.

He let out a vicious scream, charging at the soldier with the knife raised into the air. He slashed at the soldiers waist and only hit air as he quickly dashed back, leaving dust to fly into the air as he commenced his attack, quickly moving forward to swing his fists to hit him in the side of his head, hearing his knuckles crack as he did. Did the man get stronger? He didn't have any time to question as he went for his left leg, effectively slashing it up as Axton had no time to react. He was going to hiss in pain before he could barely register the fist coming for his face. He flew back, denting the wall as he was sure he had broken another rib. Yup, he was stronger.

"AND THEN, I WILL STARVE YOU FOR MONTHS, ONLY GIVING YOU WASABI FOR FOOD BEFORE I THROW YOU OUT INTO THE DESERTS, LETTING THE VULTURES HAVE THEIR WAY WITH YOU."

The soldier opened up one of his eyes, spitting out some blood as he groggily stood up. He knew he couldn't do this without a weapon.

He quickly scanned the room, searching for his backpack before he eventually found it: Right next to chair that the man was tortured in, aka, across the fucking cave. Great.

He scoffed, grabbing a nearby rock as he slammed it against a stalagmite, watching it as it crumbled to the ground. This had gotten the psycho's attention, and he began to sprint towards Axton.

Axton, seeing the impending danger, quickly grabbed one of the sharper stalagmites before he had been tackled by the man, being thrown onto the ground. It took him a quick second to recover as he kicked the man away, crawling backwards as he began to crawl back at him. Using his knife, he swung down on Axton, who, upon seeing no other way, held up his right hand, watching in grimace as the knife had completely impaled it, blood seeping down the blade and falling onto his shirt. Axton resisted the urge to scream as he used the remaining strength he had to push his hand down further and grab his hand, moving it to the side as he head butted him in the face, making sure to his the nose bridge as he heard a crack, followed by a crazy shout.

He watched his fall back, his nose streaming blood as Axton pulling his hand out of the grips of the blade and stood up, watching the man struggle to breath as his nose was flooded with blood and mucous. He huffed, making sure to finish the job.

He quickly swiped the broken stalagmite and went over to the man, stomping his boot over his chest as he coughed up blood.

"P..Please... Let me go.." He seemed normal... As if something made him revert back.

Axton let out a chuckle, putting the stalagmite into his pocket as he grabbed the resisting man by the collar, dragging him over to the wall and throwing him up against it, leaning over to meet his eye level.

"Tell me where they are." He pulled out a brown map, practically shoving it into his face as he waited for an answer.

After a reluctant conclusion, he looked up to the man, his towering figure striking fear into his heart, and the way the wound on his hand still bled sent shivers down his spine. "Alright. As long as you let me live, ok?"

He gave him a half cocked grin, "Of course."

"D..Do you have a pen?"

"Oh, no, sorry." He looked around before he had a sly grin, "Actually, I might."

"Oh, where is i- ARGHHH" He felt a sharp pain in his leg once more, this time it felt more rough and numbing.

Axton held up the bloody stalagmite with a smile, "Here it is." He shoved it into the psycho's mouth, "Now write."

The man whimpered, quickly marking 4 spots on the map before he spat the rock out. "Can I go now?"

Axton looked down before he gave the man a deadly stare. "I think you know the answer."

Some say, that if you listen closely enough, you could still hear the man's chillingly screams coming from the cave.


	22. A Mission for the Siren

Axton ran behind the chest-high metal plate that was located next to a container, crouching as he gazed over to the woman who did the same.

"Alright," he whispered, "the recording is in there, all we have to do is go in silently and get out; we don't wanna risk Jack finding out about this and send down reinforcements."

The siren nodded, a smirk on her face as she peeked over the cover, her steely eyes following the two soldiers making their rounds as they were talking about how terrifying the "Bunker" is, something Maya ignored as she ducked back down.

The soldier was wearing a black jacket, ammo bags wrapped around him snugly, carrying knock out gas and tranquilizers just in case. He had a brown holster wrapped around his waist that held his military-grade knife as well as a handgun that was specially made for tranquilizer ammo. He sported dark camo pants, and a mask that covered his lower-half of his face, leaving his hazel eyes exposed as well as his dirty blonde hair, giving him a look that the siren considered pretty fucking cool. He was crouched over, examine the paper map once over as felt the siren's gaze on him.

"What?" He asked, sending her a side glance before he returned to look at his map, using the dim light of the moon to see the names of the carriers written in a dark liquid.

"Nothin'," She chuckled slightly, "I just don't think I've never got ever seen you so serious."

He chuckled in return, turning his face up as he stared at her, "Hey, I could say the same thing about you. With all that black you have on you."

Even through his mask, she could still see his smirk.

She looked down. She was wearing a tight black suit which covered her arm- she wasn't planning on using her powers tonight- as well as special gloves that had a built in shock system which, when in contact with flesh, would instantly send over 24 watts into the human body, rendering them unconscious. She had a sniper holster on her back that was also fitted with tranquilizers as well as a Teidore SMG just in case things go bad.

She smirked and was going to playfully punch him in the soldier before she stopped herself, remembering that it would knock him out if she touched him. "Well I mean, this is a stealth mission and its night soo..

"I'm not saying it's bad, not at all, in fact, you look amazing in black."

The siren tensed, she digging her nails into her palms as she looked down at the ground, feeling her face getting hotter over every second. She was used to people calling complimenting her-both genders alike!- but when Axton said it, she felt her heart skip a beat before it leapt into her throat, her breath hitching all the while. She feels a little embarrassed to say that she liked it- _a lot!_

 _Thanks_ was all she wanted to say, but all that came out was a sqeak before she clamped her hands over her mouth, looking away from Axton as she could swear her pale face was pure red at this point.

Axton laughed, that one laugh carefree hearty laughter that she loved to hear, and that made her condition worse.

"Was that a squeak out of the great Maya?!" He whisper-shouted, suppressing back even more laughter.

The bashful siren still looked away, her hand covering her face as she tried speaking again. "S-Shut up. You just surprised me that's all."

Axton could only laugh harder, pounding the ground before he accidentally snorted, this time him clamping his hands over his mouth as the siren was letting out a muffled laughter as her hands were still over her mouth.

Axton looked over, "S-Shush! I didn't mean to do that!"

"That was too cute!"

 _Ba-Dump_

His heart skipped a beat, speeding up until it was practically pounding in his ears. He looked over to her laughing self as he began to slowly develop a smile behind his mask. How lucky was he to be able to gaze upon such a beauty as her...

"You know, you two should totally get together."

The voice startled them both as they jumped back, Axton slamming into the container behind them and Maya slamming into his chest.

"Yeah, totally, they would honestly be the best couple out there, the one true pair!" A second voice said.

"Oh my god, yes. If they don't get together, I'll probably resort to making stories about them." The first voice, definitely male, responded.

Axton finally gazed up, noticing that it was the two guards that were circling in front of the gate, they obviously had heard them.

As they were too busy making up stories for the duo, Axton grabbed Maya by her shoulders, gently pulling her up to see her face. "You ok?"

Maya's face was pure red as her eyes were shut close due to the close vicinity of the handsome soldier, "Mhm" Even her sounds came out small and flustered.

The soldier smiled as he quickly took out his pistol.

"What if we have one of them drinkin, righ- MRHM" his sentence was cut off short as the soldier unloaded a tranquilizer into his neck.

"What the hell-ARHG" he was also quickly shut up.

The two quickly went limp and fell onto the ground, piling on top of each other.

Axton sighed, removing his hands from the siren's shoulders to check his ammo. "Only 8 left, we have to make them count."

After regaining her composure, she pushed back the hair dangling in front of her face delicately behind her ear. "That should be fine though right? You always have other mags."

Axton swiftly walked to the downed men, taking their ammo and disabling their weapons just in case they awoke, his practiced hands working fast. "Right, but I only have a limited amount of mags, and since I can't reload with half and somehow take the exact amount I need from my ammo stack, I'll have to wait until all the bullets are out. So it's just a reminder so we don't end up in some dumb situation where our gun has no ammo at the worst time."

His brief explanation made the siren mentally smack herself for questioning a trained marine over how to fight. She cleared her throat, walking besides Axton as he stood up. "Right. Sorry. I'm not used to sneaky missions or missions in general.."

Axton laughed, sending her a grin, "It's fine, I didn't expect you to be some beast at recon missions."

He extended his concealed arm, it containing a couple of magazines of all kind. "I'm full up on everything so I don't need 'em."

While she still felt a little dumb, she quickly eyed over the ammo- all assault rifle ammo. "Yeah, I don't need them either; I have an SMG, this is all assault ammo."

"Oh." He simply responded before throwing the ammo over his back, "Alright then. Let's get moving."

Maya furrowed her brow as she developed a smug smile- her signature smile. "Born ready."

Axton snorted. "That was really dumb."

"Shut it."

* * *

Axton briefly looked at the watch located in the innards of his wrist.

 _3:30_

This was taking longer than planned.

He peeked around the corner of the empty hallway- well, empty besides the slight clutter of unconscious bodies littering the floor- and spotted two guards in front of a door, the door they needed to get into in order to find the tape from this place.

He looked back to the siren besides him, raising 2 fingers on his hands before he pointed around the corner. The siren nodded.

He looked back over, noticing the guards drowsy behavior as their shoulders drooped lower and lower before they suddenly jolted back up again, shaking their heads. They were tired.

He then studied the layout of the narrow hallway. The lights were on, and the white floors with yellow dashes, as well as a matching wall didn't mix well for the two black-clad vault hunters, so they couldn't just sneak up close to them as they were doing outside, but there were many obstacles standing between them, such as: long, narrow boxes, spaces where the wall goes in to make space for the doors on the sides as well as a container right next to the guard on the right side, one he was using as an arm rest. The door was located in the middle of the hall, which was good for them because less distance, but negative because it would leave them wide in the open and they didn't have time to clear the other side so they would hope that no guards would make their shift through the hallway.

The soldier smirked, this was just too easy.

He turned back, hoping, due to them being sleepy, that they wouldn't be able to hear the whispering (or simply wouldn't care).

"Alright." He began, taking a second to pause to make sure she's listening, "There's two guards up ahead- both sleepy. It doesn't seem like they would have quick reactions, or be able to keep a good guard out so we're taking advantage of that."

Maya smiled, she liked the serious Axton, it made her feel jittery.

"So I'm going to sneak up besides the container next to one of the guards, and as soon as you see me grab him, shoot the other. Alright?" Finishing his little plan, he went back to the edge to plan out his movements, unintentionally not allowing himself to see the wide smile that the siren had.

"Alright, I got it, A-Axton." She mentally slapped herself. How could she stutter on his name?! Now he's going to know something is up and find out and think she's weird and, and and..

"Alright, good." He didn't notice. "Remember: as soon as I grab my target, shoot the other guard."

"Don't worry. You may have not seen me in action yet, but I have quick reflexes. Part of the siren package."

He chuckled bemusedly. "Good, cause I don't feel like getting shot at today."

Axton shot out, dashing to one of the sunken parts of the walls, appearing as a dash of black as the enemies stared over to the end of the hallway.

"Did you see that?" One of the guard spoke as he put his hand over his mouth as he yawned.

"Do you actually care?" The other guard shot back, mirroring his yawn.

"Nope."

"Then I didn't see anything."

"Cool."

"I hate this job.."

"Same."

The guards returned back to silence as Axton decided it was safe to dash again, this time going behind a large, slender box placed by the side of the corridor. He sunk into the darkness and waited.

"I'm pretty sure I'm seeing something move over there."

"Dude, we've been standing at the same post for over 12 hours now. I'm sure your mind is just imagining the movement to make things less boring for you."

"Well that does sound sciency enough."

"Yup. I was at the top of class in high school."

"Awesome, I was the oldest in my high school."

"How old were you?"

"About 34."

"Aren't you 36?"

"Yeah."

"Oh.

Axton rolled his eyes. These guards are like nothing he's encountered. Usually, he can't even sneak since they're always hyper aware and would always check, forcing him to knock them out. But these guards... They're something else.

Finally, he dashed next to the small container next to the guard as he slid into cover, looking back to see the siren leaning out of cover with her tranq rifle. Smiling, he cautiously looked over and, luckily, the guard was looking at the wall, away from him. Taking the chance, he jolted up and grabbed him by the collar, leaving him no time to react as he dragged him over the container as he slammed him onto the ground. The whole ordeal took about 1 second, but to the guard, it must've felt even shorter. He raised his fist and brung it down hard onto his face, making his head hit the cold tile with a harsh bang. He looked up for a quick glance as he saw something that made his eyes widen in shock as he saw the tranq go past his head and hit the remaining guard in the neck before he could shoot Axton.

How could he not see it? Axton was baffled at how he missed such a big crucial detail. If his commander was here, he would've ripped him a new one.

"That was awesome!" Maya shouted, running down the hall to stand by the still Axton, a wide smile on her face. "You were like a blur, and you hit him so hard and came up with that plan!"

"Maya-"

"And, and, you're just amazing, and talented, and wonderful.."

"Maya-" he said a little more stern.

"And, and, and, I just look up to you, and you did this all for me, and-"

"Maya!" He shouted, rubbing his neck with his hand as he brung down his mask, slightly chuckling. "We sorta got a problem..."

* * *

Gaige was laying down on her velvet bed, swinging her legs aimlessly in the air.

It was a normal Sunday morning. What counts as birds around here were singing their sinister shrieks of terror, waiting for some person to lose their guard so they could swoop down and take them. The crisp, morning air was flowing through Gaige's open window, relaxing her mind as she thought of many scenarios that her and her favorite soldier could be stuck in, writing only the best ones down onto her long list that she had beside her.

She let out a girly giggle, "What if we just bump into each other one day and we accidentally kiss?!"

She clicked her mechanical pencil's head and quickly jotted it down onto her paper.

"Or maybe I'm come in rushing and I drop everything! Forcing him to help me and accidentally touch each other's hands?!"

She shook her fist like a fussy baby, letting out a squeak as she began to feel lightheaded just from the thought. She turned onto her back, staring at her tan ceiling.

"Axey~ You will be mine~" She let out another long giggle, putting her knuckles up her mouth as she rolled to and fro on the bed.

After she was done with her little freak out, she laid there quietly, wondering when he would come back and if he was safe, calm, and cool like he always is.

Gaige had a dopey grin, putting her hands behind her head as she shook her head.

 _Silly me! Axton would never get stressed out or anything of the sort in his life! He's just too cool for that._

She let out another giggle, turning back over again to write on her long list, deciding whether to put run into him when going to the gun store or killed a guy and both grab for the loot.

Once again, she swung her legs aimlessly, humming a little tune as she moved her head from side to side.

* * *

 _I'm so fucking stupid._

Axton's thoughts were pushed to the back of his head as he punched in a random sequence of numbers into the keypad.

 _Bee-doop_

The low incorrect sound mocked Axton as he ran a hand through his blond locks, thinking about how thankful he is that his commander didn't see him slip up.

He let out a sigh. "Nope, I've tried guessing, and I can't get the right code."

He turned around, avoiding the eyes of a certain siren because he felt too ashamed to peer into them. Seriously, how did he not notice the key pad?

Maya had a hand on her chin, walking over to the keypad as she tried a code, the daunting incorrect buzzar responding only mere seconds later. "Where would this have taken us?"

"Straight to where we need to be." He took his map out of his pocket, flattening against the wall so the siren could see.

"The tape would be in here somewhere." Pointing at the big green circle encasing the room.

"Can't we go around?" She questioned, putting one hand onto her hips.

"Nah. This is the only way in." He let the siren look for any alternative routes for a couple of seconds, and upon seeing no other routes, he folded the map and shoved it into his pocket.

He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms as he shut his eyes, his lips thinning as he analyzed the situation.

 ** _The objective is inside this locked room, and the only way in, as of right now, would be through the keypad. But we don't have the code for it, and the only two guards that could've possibly had any information on the codes are currently sleeping on the ground... This is a two-man mission, one of the "men" being one of the worlds powerful siren. Maybe she could.. Yeah!_**

"I got it!" His head shot up, a confident smile radiated on his face. It sent a shiver down the girl's spine.

"H-Huh?" She was a little taken aback.

"You can just use your powers to open the door!"

"... Well, I mean, yeah, but-"

"Then c'mon, lets phase blast this door!"

"Hold on, hold on!" She stopped him before he could continue any further. "My powers won't work since my arm is covered."

"That's a thing?"

"Yeah. Something about natural energy in the air that gets exchanged for the 'fuel' I use for my powers."

Axton but his fist up to his chin. "So it has to be exposed?" The siren gave him a slight nod, "Then just take the glove off."

The siren chuckled sheepishly. "It's a full body suit."

"Then take off the top part."

The siren tensed, her pale face becoming red. "About that..."

This time it was Axton's turn to tense up. "Don't tell me..."

"Y-Yeah, I'm not wearing anything underneath this."

Axton knew what she was going to say, but the information hit him like a brick.

After shaking away some images, he cleared his throat. "A-Alright. You do that, and I'm gonna turn around ok?"

"What?!" She shouted, her knees nearly buckling at the thought of Axton seeing her naked.

"There's no other way to get in! If there was, I would've definitely gone with that option!" Axton defended his idea.

The siren groaned, he was right. "A-Alright. But don't peak alright!"

The soldier let out a affirmative grunt, not trusting his voice at this moment. He quickly turned around, squeezing his eyes shut as he clenched his fist, begging anyone that could be up there to give him the strength to not look at her.

The siren took a solid 2 minutes before finally raising a delicate finger to her zipper located on the center of her. Her heart pounded in her ears, her breath ragged as she felt her knees wobble. She felt as though she had run a marathon twice over! She had no energy. Her mind was blank, her head was light, as her hands shook. She has never felt this nervous in her life, and it's all thanks to that man!

The night trudged along as another 5 minutes was wasting on deciding to pull her zipper. Axon was a patient man for sure, but even this was too much for him.

He rapped his foot on the ground, his arms crossed as his fingers drummed along his forearm. He had his head rested upon the cold, metal wall. This was taking too long.

...

"Are you do-"

"No!"

The response was quick and direct, causing Axton to slightly jump as he let out a sigh.

"Y'know, the guards are gonna wake up, and then it'll be just troublesome to get out of here.

No response.

"Maya?"

Axton was never one to make mistakes, and even when he did, they were always small ones. This one, however, was a really fucking big one.

He spun on his heel, his mind set on convincing the girl as he faced her. For a split second, he saw an angel. A goddess sent from the heavens to traverse these lands and grace others with her sheer presence. The next second, he saw a purple fist flying towards his face, his fast reflexes failing him as he felt his soul nearly get torn out once the punch landed.

He flew towards the door, breaking through as he got shot into a pile of cardboard boxes.

The siren let out quick and rapid exhales. "Door's open,"

Axton's breathing was hoarse, his eye was bruised. He slowly rose up once more, putting on his mask as his blurry vision could barely register the shocked guards, briefly taking out his gun.

"That... Was... Really... Dumb."

* * *

 **A.N.**

Sorry for the long wait, but I finally finished this chapter. Had no idea it wasn't finished until like a week ago. Anyways, I'll make sure to work quickly on the next chapter! Thanks for reading!


	23. The Awakening of a New, Better Feeling

Axton groaned, holding his badly-bandaged hand over his bruised eye, resting his head on the cold steel of the car, with each bump his head shook, causing him pain.

He shifted his head as he leaned into his seat, sinking lower. "You didn't have to punch me that hard y'know," He started, looking over to the siren who had her eyes glued to the dark, dirt road, the thin narrow beam of dim light slicing through the black.

"You didn't have to turn around," She shot back, her face becoming slightly red as she thought back to the moment. "Besides, I didn't punch you that hard."

Axton grimaced as he put a hand over his wounds, remembering the sensation of the hot steel as it shot through him.

"I broke through a metal door." He bluntly put, sending over a small glance.

The siren silently groaned, furrowing her brow. She felt guilty, simply put. She stared over to the man. Only seeing his back, she couldn't see all the scratches and bruises he had on his front side, but she knew they were there, which tore at her heart. His hair blew gently in the soft breeze of the desert, periodically whipping about when the wind picked up. His eyes were shut, an attempt to fall asleep on this bumpy road. A sleep that wasn't going to happen for a while.

She rappped her thumbs on the leather steering wheel, preparing herself for the swallowing of pride that was about to happen.

"You're right, you're right, it was sorta hard. I'm- I'm sorry."

Axton was about to nod triumphantly before she started again,

"But still, you saw me naked, and only my mom has ever seen me naked, so I think the reaction was a little justifiable."

Her cheeks began to feel warm. Even just thinking about his piercing hazel eyes staring at her, piercing her soul and utter being made her heart beat soar and make her feel embarrassed and timid. She wasn't used to feeling this way, so she did as she did with something unknown, she shoved it deep down into her thoughts. Which was proving to be quite difficult.

Axton cheeks flushed as well. The image was still vivid in his mind. He has seen countless of women nude, but she was incomparable to them, she was on a whole different level. Her skin was smooth, silky and a warm pale. Her tattoos ran all over her body, as he has just now realized, and they had such beautiful designs, splitting off into trees and flowers as they depicted a garden of Eden, a sign of her natural powers. Even if it was for a second, he enjoyed ever moment of it. Until the punch that is. He unconsciously rubbed his cheek, feeling slight jabs of pain as he came nearer to the bruise. Still, worth it.

"Yeah, s-sorry." He rubbed his head, sitting up straight as he gazed over to the siren.

He was thinking about saying something risky, which he wouldn't have said before, but having almost died yet another time, he decided why not.

"Hey, Maya..." He softly called out, a voice not even he knew he had.

The Goddess send him a side glance, smiling at the fact he wasn't leaning over again and that she could actually see his face again.

"Yeah, Axton?"

There was a brief pause, Axton taking several gulped and wondering if he should do this. After a while, he hesitantly decided to go for it. He took a deep breath, looking over to the siren.

"You're the most beautiful person I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. Everything about you is perfect, even the corny things you make." He gave her his signature boyish smirk, a healthy blush on his face.

The siren's mouth was agape, her mind blanking for a moment before she realized what he had said. Then it hit her.

Her heart beat raced off into the distance, leaving her breath quick and ragged as her face was ablaze, her arms shaking as her knees wobbled. She was left staring into the smiling Axton's face, convinced she had contracted some unknown illness because she had never felt this way. She felt as though a million of trains had smashed into her at once, and yet, it felt... Pleasing, in some weird ass way.

She made a mental note to look up this strange illness once they get back.

"O-Oh, um, thank you Axton." She had a timid joyful smile, she was happy that he called her beautiful!

"Don't mention it!" If only he knew how many shivers run through her with just that smile.

* * *

Once they had finally made it back, it had been midday.

The sky was a bright blue, some clouds in the sky swirled as the wind made them dance. The glaring sun sat atop the world, looking down onto the people. The birds, if you could call them that, flew in the sky like cars on a road, always another pack right behind.

Axton jumped out, shutting the door as Maya did the same. They walked up to the guards, giving him a small wave as they walked in.

"Axton!" The smal girl jumped onto Axton, making him stumble back as he looked down, her small face burying itself in his chest leaving only her red hair and goggles to be seen.

She gazed up, her emerald eyes showing concern.

"Hey, Gaige-"

"Axton what happened?! You're all bandaged and bruised an-"

The soldier held up his hands through the small space that was allowed due to the hug, "I'm fine, I'm fine. Just some scratches and what not."

He gave her his traditional smirk, making the siren's stomach twist and twirl, her tattoos glowing as she felt annoyed.

Gaige, on the other hand, replaced her concerned gaze with a joyful one. "You're right, nothing can stop you! But we should still get that looked at. I don't want anything happening to you."

Her smile was big and sincere, getting off as she grabbed Axton's arm, pulling him away from the siren. He mouthed a _sorry!_ As he was dragged off to HQ.

The siren was left alone, the silence helping her realize that her teeth were clenched. She quickly shook her head, remembering to search up her illness.

She marched off to the only doctor in down, Dr. Zed. He may not be an actual Doctor, but he was smart, and also well versed when it came to everything science and biology.

She walked into the small, smelly "hospital", searching for the doctor.

"Oh, Maya!" The doctor walked out of his office, his mask still on (Does it ever come off?). Any ways, he walked over, giving her a quick hug before holding her at arms length, "How's my favorite siren? You still feeling fatigued?"

Maya gave him an awkward smile, due to the contact. "No, I'm doing fine actually. Well... No, I take that back. I have a problem doc."

Doctor Zed gave off a hearty laugh, "Don't we all?"

He let go of her, walking off, "Come to my office, we can discuss it in there."

The siren, despite him not being able to see it, nodded, following the doctor into his even smaller office.

Once she walked through his "doors", a strong oder hit her, one consisting of booze and blood.

"Take a seat." He circled around his desk to sit down in his large black chair, leaning back into it comfortable as he put his hands together. "So, what seems to be the problem?"

The siren sighed, looking up to the doctor. "Well doc, that's the thing, I don't know."

"Well describe it to me," he leaned forward, his hands still together.

"Well..." She darted her eyes, it was embarrassing to talk about, "Whenever I'm with this one person, my heart beat gets quicker. My breath hitches and I have a difficulty of breathing. Not only that, but I can't seem to think whenever I'm around them, and it's even worse when they talk to me! So tell me, what's wrong with me?"

The doctor began to chuckle for it turned into a uproarious laughter. "It's so obvious!"

The siren had a clueless look upon her, her eyebrow delicately rasing.

"Oh wow, you really don't know..."

She shook her head, "So what is it?"

"Techinally: it's a chemical reaction in your brain that makes you feel an intense feeling of affection for someone, or more commonly known as, love. You love this man."

4 simple words made her world freeze. Her brain couldn't process it. She loves Axton. She repeated this to herself many times, but it just made her more... Alert. More aware to these feelings. As well a opening a dam of feelings, it also raised many questions. One in particular stuck out: why did she like the sound of it so much, it's just words, right?

Right?

Regardless of her confusion, she thanked the doctor, a smile on her face that she couldn't control. She nearly skipped out, forgetting all the terrible smells of the hospital as she walked out, sun bathing her face as it practically sparkled. She was finally beginning to accept it, understand it.

She was in love.

* * *

 **A.N**

Sorry for the short chapter, but I had to get something out before it turned into another story that the author just stops updating. I have no idea how I'm going to finish this, but just know, it's going to be soon, so be ready for that! Thanks for reading my story! I never thought I would have so many people reading this when I first clicked post for the first chapter! Thanks again, and I hope you have a wonderful day, or night, or whatever!


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